Jack in the Box, page 3
‘Spot on,’ Khavari said. ‘Having had a look inside, we think it’s underneath her, beneath the abdomen – like a mat she’d been laid on.’
‘What’s the score with the legs?’ Slater said, in a choked voice. ‘I can see it’s a display, but how’d he manage that?’
‘All done post-mortem – like, immediately post-mortem. I’ll have to wait until we get her onto the table before I know for sure, but so far as I can tell, she was dragged downstairs feet first, then he emptied out the toybox and placed her inside. Carefully. He meant to do it.’
‘But the bones, the joints . . . was this lady an acrobat or a contortionist?’
‘No – she was slim and kept fit. There’s a gym upstairs, looks like for her use mainly. That would have made it easier for him to fold her up. Look at the placement of the feet. This wasn’t an accident.’
‘How did he do it?’
‘Immediately after she was gone, I’d say he bent her into that shape, cool as you like. Popped out the hip joints, gave the base of the spine one hell of a kick and folded her in, like you’d fold some clothes.’
‘Planned it like that.’ Lomond turned to Slater. He was dying to be rid of the suit. The elastic was pinching his face, a headache pinching his skull. Even to be out in the cold and the snow would be the purest relief from the oppression, the heat of the lights, the restriction. ‘We’ve got someone here who plans. Nothing random about this.’
Slater merely nodded. ‘No doubt about it. None.’
The cheeky forensics officer cleared his throat.
‘Yes, you can lower the lid,’ Lomond said.
‘And make sure you’re not so wide, in future,’ Slater snapped, before he could reply.
7
He’d found a flight fast enough. Direct from Amsterdam. Even at that stage, in that scenario, Slater had made a joke or two about the fact of Edward Symes’ absence. Lomond had told him off for it, wearily.
Symes himself even allowed room for it, as soon as he’d made contact with Police Scotland upon his return, then been ushered into a squad car and driven from Glasgow airport to Govan. ‘I actually was on business. No one believed me. You should’ve seen my mother-in-law’s face.’
Joking aside, Edward Symes – ‘it’s Ed’ – had been sober, horribly so, perhaps as sober as he would ever be. There was an edge to his voice, even when he laughed, which he did surprisingly often. Lomond had seen plenty of examples of this. It could go any way, really. Someone going monkey tits was a possibility. Monkey tits was one of a million crudities an old sergeant from back in Lomond’s uniform days had used: something else he wished he could forget, and never would. They might cry. Or, worst of all, they might withdraw. Twin receding points of light in the eyes, like an old analogue telly settling itself from static to silence. Lomond wasn’t quite sure how far Symes would go.
He had taken it upon himself to bring a lawyer, which wasn’t necessary but was entertaining. Friend of the family. Lomond had never met him. His face resembled a shirt front struggling to contain a big belly: huge mouth, huge lips, red cheeks. Ed Symes was sober, but Lomond wondered about his brief.
‘My client would like to make it clear that he was out of the country when this terrible incident happened. However it came about, he has no knowledge of it, nor did he have any active part in it . . .’
Lomond raised a hand. ‘Please, settle down there. We know he didn’t do anything. We know where he’s been. We just want to have a conversation to see if he can provide us with anything that could steer us in the right direction. It’s important we move fast. I know you’ll want to see a quick result, Ed.’
Symes sat back. He was holding his hands in a strange way. Later, Lomond would liken it to someone grappling with an invisible Rubik’s Cube.
‘It’s fine,’ Symes said. He took a breath. It was a bad place to be chatting to him. The lighting, the desk, the recording equipment, and Lomond and Slater – everything had the appearance of an arrest, an accusation. The lawyer didn’t help.
‘If you’d like a tea or something?’ This wasn’t the first time Lomond had asked.
‘No, I’m fine.’
‘A smoke, then.’
Bingo. ‘Yes – is there a smoker’s area somewhere?’
‘There is. We usually have to put a ball and chain on folk, though. Stop them jumping over the walls.’ When Symes didn’t smile, Lomond added quickly, ‘I’ll take you outside.’
‘I’ll come with you,’ said the lawyer, scraping his seat back.
‘No, that’ll be OK, Bennett,’ said Symes.
‘Keep the lawyer company, please, Malcolm,’ Lomond said, patting Slater on the shoulder. Slater looked at the red-faced man for a moment, then folded his arms, a disgruntled teenager.
Outside, Lomond, who detested smoking, stood far enough away to keep his expression and manner neutral as Symes burned a cigarette down to the filter in seconds. ‘Sorry. Nerves going crazy.’
Lomond coughed. ‘Anyway. First question, how are you bearing up?’
‘I’m not,’ Symes said quietly. He was a tall man with a kind face, prominent cheekbones and thick, prematurely grey hair, somewhat unruly and all the better for it. He was someone who had aged well. Him and Kath would have made a fine, striking pair. ‘I’m all over the place.’
‘All I can say is – take things at your own pace. I don’t want to waste your time. And I definitely don’t want you to feel as if you’re being interrogated or anything.’
Symes raised a hand. ‘It was my call to come here. I thought it was the best thing . . . Can I be honest with you?’
‘Course you can.’
‘I wanted to get out of my sister’s house. Total, sheer madness. I didn’t want more police in there. Beatrice was sleeping. She just missed it, you know. Kath’s mother is a royal pain in the arse, but she had the foresight to keep her in the car. Imagine if she’d come in and seen it.’
He might have cried then. He took a long draw, composed himself and said, ‘Do you know if it was quick?’
‘I think it was reasonably quick, Mr Symes.’
‘Reasonably. Interesting word, that.’
‘That’s off the record. The forensic report isn’t in yet. I can’t officially comment in any way until the pathologist tells me what happened.’
‘Was she cut up? Was she . . . anything else?’
‘Again, off the record, it seems she was smothered. There is nothing else I can say.’
‘God.’ He shook his head. ‘How did it happen? The cameras must have caught it.’
‘From what we’ve seen so far and the information you’ve given us, one of the cameras had a fault.’ Lomond kept his tone conversational. ‘We’re looking into what that was. Had you had any problems with the camera system?’
‘Absolutely not. I was paranoid about it. Well, that’s maybe not the right word to use,’ Symes added, seeing some subtle change in Lomond’s expression. ‘I wasn’t paranoid about the situation. We only moved into that house about a year ago. Before last Christmas. An Avalon King house. Rock-solid build. Good rep. And they had all these extra security features on them. I was obsessed with making sure it was all working. Like a new toy, I suppose. I remember we caught a jackdaw one morning, perched on the edge of a camera. Screengrabbed it – I think Kath used it as her screensaver for a wee while.’
‘So you knew how to use the system?’
‘Yep – and one thing about it, if there’s any issue, it tips you off, as well. Any break in the chain and a light flashes up.’
‘This is obvious?’
‘Aye – red light on the console. It happened when one of the cameras wasn’t picking anything up.’
‘When was this?’
‘Six or seven weeks ago . . . Halloween time? Turned out a wood pigeon had shat on it One of the problems with having woods out the back. One of the blessings, as well.’ He searched in his pocket for a fresh cigarette.
Lomond felt the drifting flakes settle on the back of his neck and find their way through his hair to his scalp. ‘And everything was working when you left?’
‘Yep – I remember showing Beatrice the basics, in case the alarm ever went off for some reason. It happened when Kath was out sorting something in the car one day.’ He paused, placing the cigarette between his lips, lighter poised. ‘You’re asking me this . . . surely the cameras must have picked something up?’
Lomond didn’t take long to weigh up how much he should say. ‘Like I said, it seems there’s a fault somewhere with one of the cameras.’
‘Which one? I know where they are.’
‘The one that covered the lawn.’
‘And that’s how he got in? The garden?’
Lomond shook his head. ‘We don’t think so – there had been snow, thicker than this, and it had landed. There would have been footprints. But there was nothing. It’s possible he came in another way, around the side of the shed, an area where he wouldn’t have left footprints. But–’
‘That would mean someone knew there was a weakness in the system. The cameras didn’t cover all the angles. Not every direction. There’s a blind spot.’
‘Who else would have known about your camera system, Ed?’
‘No one.’ Symes shook his head determinedly. ‘All watertight. Beatrice didn’t know the code, and we were damned careful about it all. Kath wouldn’t have . . .’
‘And your mother-in-law?’
‘She knew the code. And she’s a gasbag.’
‘No one else?’
Symes frowned. ‘How did this happen? Cameras everywhere, and there must have been footprints somewhere!’
‘We’ve got dozens of officers out there, knocking on doors, checking for footprints, the whole street. Don’t you worry about that,’ Lomond said.
‘Unbelievable!’
He was on the verge of losing it, Lomond thought. He said quickly, ‘How about grudges, anything like that? Anyone you know with a problem?’
‘Well. Closest thing we’ve had to that for a while is the guy at the top of the crescent. Vincent Finch. Think he actually worked on these houses, owned a few nearby. Liked what he saw, obviously. He’s wanting to build an extension, but it’ll block out a lot of light, so the rest of the street told him to bugger off. Cheeky bastard. He took a spite against most of us for that. Me in particular.’
‘You say “for a while”,’ Lomond said, his notebook appearing in his hand without Symes noticing. ‘Have you had problems with anyone before? Friend or business partner you fell out with, someone from the past?’
‘Aye,’ Symes said, with an almost comically venomous edge to his voice. ‘Just the one, you could say. That bastard comedian.’
8
Cara Smythe had sleep in her eyes, but she hadn’t slept. This was a new one. She rubbed it away, then flipped open her compact. Dark shadows under the eyes, and those lines around her mouth. She didn’t have time to do anything about either. She dry-swallowed a couple of ibuprofen; they fought her all the way down. Time to get on, she thought.
Out of the cubicle, Cara fixed her shirt collar, then smoothed down the lapels of her jacket, straightened her back, and – holy cow, Batman – just like that she was DS Smythe. She appraised her reflection as she crossed over to the sinks. In the mirror, even in the stark lighting, Smythe wasn’t looking too bad, provided she didn’t try to smile. Smythe had learned that it was better not to. Not that the old headmistress death-stare was without problems. You got looks in return, sometimes comments. The worst of these were at weddings.
‘You know, you’d be a lovely lassie if you smiled a bit more.’
‘And you’d be a lovely auntie if you breathed a bit less.’
Had she actually said that, at the last wedding? She had.
Into the briefing room, and there he was, the wee Buddha himself, preparing to present, all five feet eight of the good stuff. Inspector Lomond was the SIO, and people would bitch about it, but there was a reason he got these jobs. To his credit, Lomond sometimes couldn’t believe it either. He had lost a little weight since the Ferryman carry-on, but he still looked like you could punch him in the belly all day and neither of you would feel anything. Cara saw his brown eyes narrow in annoyance as he spotted Slater strolling into the room, a folder under his arm. The slightly nettled daddy. Smythe smiled for the first time that day.
Slater nodded as he sat beside her, and she felt a stab of irritation to go with the throbbing cramps in her abdomen. Slater had a puckish charm – ‘more front than Blackpool’, it had been said more than once – at odds with his gym-pinched features and close-shaven head. Smythe had worked with him for so long she had developed a liking, and then a disliking, for him.
‘Here we go again, eh?’ was his opening line.
‘What d’you mean?’
‘Another serial job.’
‘Let’s hope not, eh?’
‘Goes without saying,’ Slater muttered, annoyed.
Lomond said, ‘I’ll make this as brief as I can. Victim is Kath Symes. Thirty-six. On her own at home in Fairham. New estate, big house. She was found yesterday afternoon by her mother, after waving her daughter, Beatrice, off to school in the morning. She’d been dragged out of the bath, we reckon just after lunchtime, smothered, then stuffed into a toybox in the kitchen. You’ll see here the position of the body, and you’ll note in the other photos the placing of the scarf. Not to get too psychological about it, that’s as close as the guy who did it can get to drawing a big red arrow pointing to where the victim was put. Her mother followed it, and found the body. The wee girl, thankfully, was out in the car.’
Lomond let the briefing room, a dozen plainclothes officers, absorb the pictures as he clicked through them. The bluish face, the jemmied-open eyes. The red scarf, white tiling. The only sound aside from the click of the tablet Lomond used to control the images on the screen was the hum of the lights.
‘No sign she was sexually assaulted, though she was subject to some violence. If it was a single killer – and we can’t be sure about that – then it was someone strong and able. She died on the bathroom floor, then she was dragged down the stairs, feet first. The killer took his time to fold her into the toybox – if I can call this neat, then he . . .’ Lomond caught himself. ‘The killer was neat.’
The image changed again. The snow-dusted garden, like icing on a Stollen cake. ‘Here’s the garden,’ Lomond said. ‘Not overlooked, which gives us a problem. We’ve got no witnesses. The way the houses are built, these gardens look onto wasteland at the back: quite a few conifers, a path taken by dog walkers. As you can see, this image looks onto the garden. Going by other security systems and doorbell cameras on the rest of the street, it doesn’t look like our killer got in through the front door. But here’s the tricky bit: he didn’t get in through the back door either. Not that we can see.’
‘There’re no footprints? Along that path or on the lawn? In that snow?’ Smythe hadn’t meant to say this out loud. One or two tuts from the rows behind her; Smythe knew she was known as a bit of a school swot, because she was.
‘I was coming to that,’ Lomond said dryly. ‘No – there were no footprints. The way the snow fell was odd – there was a dusting in the morning, it melted, then a bit more in late afternoon, right as Kath was killed. It could be that her killer was lucky – got in and out of the back door when it had melted, got to the bottom of the garden and went out via the snib-lock gate opening onto the back that you can see here.’
‘Cameras?’ Smythe fought the urge to look round. She knew that voice, coming from the back of the room: self-consciously raspy, over-confident.
‘There’s a security system attached to the house,’ Lomond said. ‘A good one. Cameras, multiple spots. The connecting wire for one of them was damaged, and it seems damaged that day. That’s the one covering the western edge of the lawn. You can see here the pine trees at the edge of the western wall – they might have provided some cover for the killer. The wire had been cut recently. But if that was the case, then the killer would have left footprints, some kind of evidence, in the soil underneath the trees. The ground was nice and soft. There were no new footprints that anyone could see.’
‘Any other way in?’ Slater asked.
‘It doesn’t look like anyone could have got in through any of the windows at the side – they’re overlooked, and covered by some of the neighbours’ security systems. And there’s nothing to suggest he got in through the attic or the roof – the snow dusted the slating, as we can see here. No one had disturbed that.’
This time Smythe remembered to put up her hand.
‘Yes, Cara.’
‘So this woman was killed by an intruder, but there’s nothing to suggest how they got in or out?’
‘Correct. They did get in, obviously. And they got out again without being seen – that means the back of the house. But the rest of it’s a blank. All we know is it wasn’t the husband.’
‘Hitman?’ Myles Tait again.
‘Doubt it,’ Lomond said. ‘We’ll check it out, but it’s highly unlikely. Everything about this – the fact the husband was away, that she was alone in the house – points to it being planned. Someone stalked this woman, sneaked in without being seen, killed her, then sneaked out again. And if they’ve done it once, they’ll probably do it again.’
9
Lomond held Slater, Smythe and Tait behind in the briefing room. The trio waited for him to gather his notes, which he pinched between thumb and forefinger before pausing in the act of flipping them over, his attention distracted by something he read there. He was sipping water from a polystyrene cup in his other hand, and there was something painterly in his demeanour, offset as it was by the dust motes chasing each other through the light above his head.
‘The dream team,’ Slater said, rubbing his hands. ‘Wonder who’s Team A and who’s Team B?’
‘We know you’ll be Team A, teacher’s pet,’ Tait said tartly. ‘Or maybe he’ll shock us.’
Tait had put on a bit of weight, Slater decided, with no little satisfaction, now that he was close up. Previously Tait had had that ‘rugger bugger but svelte’ look to him – all sculpted sideburns and nary a hair out of place, with the accent to match. He’d grown a little jowlier and had taken to wearing glasses, although they were far too small for his beefy features. The fat of comfort, thought Slater: new girlfriend, maybe. He was vain, though, and wouldn’t have meant to put on any weight.
