For Reasons Unknown (6 page)

Overnight the temperature had plunged to a perishing minus five degrees. By 6 a.m. everything was covered in an icy white glaze. Pavements were slippery underfoot; frost crunched under the weight of tyres; and the dead, frozen body of a man was discovered behind an industrial bin in Sheffield City Centre.

A man on his way to work, taking a short cut to the tram stop on West Street, stumbled across the body next to an 80s themed nightclub on Holly Lane. He dialled 999 then waited impatiently for uniformed officers to arrive. By the time they did, not only was the witness hopping from foot to foot to keep warm but he was thoroughly pissed off at being late for work on employee evaluation day.

A tall constable tentatively made his way to the steel bin. A pair of legs was sticking out from behind but nothing more. The closer he went more of the body was revealed. When he reached the face he quickly clamped a leather gloved hand over his mouth. It looked as if the victim’s head had exploded.

The call came through to the MIT and was answered by DS Sian Mills. When she relayed the news to Acting DCI Hales he almost punched the air with excitement.

‘Grab your coat and a DC and let’s go,’ he said to Sian. He was out of the door before he’d finished talking.

At fifty, Ben Hales had never quite reached his full potential and didn’t know why. He was a well-built man with plenty of padding around the middle and dark salt-and-pepper hair cut short. His personality was prickly, which, if you didn’t know him, could be mistaken for severe. Nobody in work knew him. A fact that he didn’t care about.

‘Blimey, what’s got into him?’ Faith Easter said. She’d nearly been sent flying by a departing Ben Hales as she entered the room.

‘Don’t bother taking your coat off. Uniform have found a body. Come on.’

It wasn’t far from South Yorkshire Police HQ to the murder site and there was no great rush, but Hales had his foot firmly pressed on the accelerator all the way there. Sian was in the passenger seat sending a text to DS Aaron Connolly letting him know where they all were, while Faith was in the back seat holding on tight to the door strap.

Hales pulled the Audi up at a dodgy angle and jumped out of the car. The two uniformed officers had been joined by a further five who were busy securing the area with blue and white police tape. A small crowd of perverse onlookers had already gathered.

This was exactly what Hales had been hoping for; an active murder investigation he could get his teeth into and show his bosses who had the ability to lead the Murder Investigation Team. He clapped his hands together as he approached the uniformed officers.

‘Right then, who was first on the scene?’

‘We were, sir. I’m PC Ashcroft and this is PC Rutherford.’

‘What have we got?’

‘A dead man behind the industrial bin. He’s been very badly beaten.’

‘Who found him?’

‘A passer-by on his way to work.’ He looked at his notebook. ‘Jason Patterson. I’ve got his address and contact details.’

‘Doctor?’

‘On his way, sir.’

‘Forensics?’

‘On their way, sir.’

‘Excellent. I want you to keep a record of everyone who comes onto the scene and don’t let anyone in who shouldn’t be. That’s anyone from the press and anyone who isn’t anything to do with analysing a dead body. Do you understand?’

‘Yes sir,’ he replied through chattering teeth.

‘Good lad. Also, tape off this entire area, not just the alleyway, and get the crowd moved further back.’

‘Yes sir,’ he repeated.

Hales turned to Sian and Faith, a smile on his face. ‘Let’s take a look at him then.’ The women exchanged a puzzled glance.

Holly Lane was a small alleyway behind the City Hall. It was mostly used as a cut-through for people to get to the tram stop or the amenities on West Street. There was a spacious car park to the left and a nightclub to the right.

The body was undisturbed. Hales had no intention of disturbing him either, not until the doctor and forensics had been. If he wanted to impress the ACC he needed to do everything by the book. Now was not the time for cutting corners or making mistakes.

Hales bent down to get a good look at the victim. He screwed his face up at the state of him; his features were broken, eyes swollen shut, nose smashed, jaw shattered. His hair was matted with frozen blood. Whoever had killed him had been relentless in their attack. This was a vicious crime and Hales could not be more pleased.

‘Faith, find out who runs the nightclub. I want CCTV footage and I want to know what time they were open until last night and whether they had any trouble. Also, there’s a car park across the road, I want CCTV from that too and check with the City Hall. I want to know what show was on and the time it finished and, again, CCTV from the front and back of the building. Get uniform to help you.’

‘Yes sir.’ She turned quickly almost hitting Sian in the face with her ponytail.

‘This shouldn’t be too difficult,’ Hales said to Sian. He smiled. ‘We’re slap bang in the middle of the city centre surrounded by nightclubs and a big concert venue. CCTV should solve this before lunch if we’re lucky. A badly beaten-up male outside a nightclub; no prizes for guessing where he’d come from.’

Sian had her arms wrapped around her and held herself rigid with the cold. She frowned at her boss.

‘We’ll wait until forensics have been, run his prints and if he’s not on the system I want you to have a look through missing persons. Also, give the station a call; ask if anyone has reported anyone missing in the last day or so.’

‘It’s a bit early for that isn’t it?’ Sian asked, teeth chattering.

‘Time is of the essence Sian. By the way, I’d invest in a decent winter coat if I was you.’

Sian turned away. An energetic Acting DCI Hales was unsettling to watch. He was usually monosyllabic and rigid. Where had his sudden animation come from?

A deep red Vauxhall Astra pulled up and out stepped the pathologist, Dr Adele Kean. They made eye contact straight away.

‘Morning Sian, bloody freezing isn’t it?’ she said, quickly taking off her coat and opening the boot to find a blue protective suit.

‘On days like these you just want to wrap yourself in the duvet and forget about work.’

Adele smiled. ‘What have you got for me then?’

‘A dead male, beaten to death by the looks of him. I hope you’ve not had a fry-up for breakfast as you’ll be bringing it straight back up.’

‘I’m a good girl; Greek yogurt and blueberries for me.’

‘Really?’

‘No chance. It’s two coffees and a slice of toast. I’m never in the mood to eat first thing but I have to choke something down. I can’t leave the house on an empty stomach.’

‘My husband’s the same. He’d throw up in the car if he didn’t have breakfast.’

‘Who’s in charge?’

‘Acting DCI Hales,’ Sian said with the emphasis on acting.

‘Did you see Matilda yesterday?’

‘Yes briefly. It’s good to have her back. Pity she’s not back in charge of the murder team. It would have been nice to see her take this on.’

‘Well, it’s not for long. You’ll have her back with you soon.’

‘I hope so.’

‘Not a fan of your current leader?’ she asked as she was struggling into a blue forensics suit and a pair of plastic overshoes.

‘I don’t know what’s got into him this morning but he’s bouncing around like a five-year-old.’

‘Oh great that’s all we need.’

Adele grabbed her case from the boot and went over to Hales, who was still standing at the edge of the alleyway looking down at the body.

‘Good morning,’ she said in her usual cheerful manner.

He was startled from his thoughts and quickly turned around. ‘Oh, good morning Adele. You were quick.’

‘The call came through while I was on my way in so I detoured.’

‘Well prepare yourself for a nasty one. All I can tell you is that he’s male. I can’t give you an age range or a description, he’s been roughed up pretty badly.’

‘If you want to come with me you’ll need to suit up. Sian,’ she called over to the waiting, and shivering DS, ‘can you bring some footplates from the back of my car?’

‘I’m guessing whoever designed these suits were the same people who created maternity clothing,’ Sian said as she approached the pathologist and handed over the aluminium footplates.

Adele dotted them around the alleyway, finishing directly in front of the victim.

‘Stick to the plates, please,’ she said as Hales, now suited up, entered the mouth of the alley.

She then stepped forward, surveying the surrounding area before looking down at the victim. She took a deep breath and then pulled the mask up over her mouth and nose. Hales was not kidding; he looked like he’d been through a blender.

‘I think it’s safe to say he was killed here,’ she said, pointing at the frozen globules of blood on the walls. She lifted up the left hand and had a good look at the fingernails. ‘They’re nice and neat so he took care of himself. There are some good pieces of skin under here too, whether they belong to him or the attacker I don’t know but we’ll definitely be able to get a match from them.’

‘Excellent,’ Hales said to himself. ‘Time of death?’

‘That’s not going to be easy seeing as it was bloody cold last night. I don’t think it got above freezing all day. He could have been here since ten o’clock last night or just an hour.’

‘Can’t you be more accurate?’

‘Not right now. Rigor mortis has been given a helping hand by the weather. I’ll take temperature readings but he’s stone cold.’ She shivered. The thin plastic suit she had over her clothes was not designed to withstand such cold temperatures. She couldn’t wait to get into her office and turn on the heater. ‘I’ve got my assistant coming. She’ll take some photographs, we’ll get him bagged, then back to the lab and we’ll take some samples. Give me a couple of hours and come by for the PM.’

‘Thank you, Adele.’

Hales turned his back on the crime scene and headed for the Audi. He tried to suppress his grin but this could not have worked out better. Last night he had hardly slept. Lying next to his snoring wife his mind had been a whirl of what was going to happen to him and his career now Matilda Darke was back. He’d had the creeping feeling he’d get a phone call over breakfast from the ACC telling him to return to the CID incident room, but now he could relax, for the time being. This was a fresh murder scene, and, judging by the gossip that had been doing the rounds at the station yesterday, Matilda was in no fit state to lead one. This would be his. All his. And, fingers crossed, so would every other suspicious death that happened within the South Yorkshire boundary.

Matilda woke with a vodka-induced headache and had to force herself out of bed. It was only her second day back at work but it felt like she’d never been away, and not in a good way. As she dragged herself to the shower she wished she had never gone back.

The force of the hot water stung her aching body. She was tender and every muscle seemed to be screaming out in pain. She ignored the cries to return to bed and allowed the water to cascade down her body. To continue the torture she quickly turned the temperature from hot to as cold as it could go and the needles became sharper. She soon woke up and once again her brain was alert and ready.

Like yesterday she had to force down her breakfast of an extremely strong coffee and a slice of toast before dressing and leaving the house. She had sent a text to DC Fleming the night before, saying she would pick him up and they would go straight to the Harkness house in Whirlow to watch the demolition. It was pointless going into the station first. Or did she just want to avoid seeing her replacement, Acting DCI Ben Hales?

When she reached Rory’s terraced house in Woodseats she pulled up and beeped for him. Within a minute the front door was pulled open and he bounded out of the house like a puppy going for his morning walk. She heard him shout a cheerful goodbye behind him and head towards the car. He had a silly grin on his face. She tried to remember a time when she was as happy about her job as he seemed to be, but the memory didn’t appear to exist.

‘You’re looking chirpy this morning,’ she said, indicating she was about to pull out into traffic, before Rory had secured his seatbelt.

‘Well for the first time in I can’t remember how long I had an early finish yesterday. I cooked a lovely meal, then we curled up on the sofa and watched a DVD together.’

She glanced at him and noticed his smile was even wider. She could guess the lovely evening had continued into the bedroom. She would also bet they didn’t get to the end of the DVD.

Underneath his Jonathan Creek duffel coat Rory was dressed smartly in a navy blue suit, white shirt, and light blue tie. Matilda was wearing the same navy suit as yesterday; the trousers were creased, and there was a stain on a lapel she couldn’t remember getting. Compared to her subordinate she felt like a bag lady.

‘Another cold one this morning,’ Rory said, making conversation after a silence of a couple of minutes. ‘Forecast said there could be some snow by the weekend.’

Matilda didn’t reply. She didn’t feel as if she had anything to add to the pointless dialogue.

‘What’s the plan for today then, after the demolition I mean?’

‘Well I thought we’d track down Jonathan Harkness. He’s the only relative living in the area. We’ll tell him we’re having another look at the case and see what he has to tell us.’

‘And if he doesn’t have anything new to tell us?’

‘Then we work the file. There has to be something in there that someone’s missed.’

‘Do you think he’ll remember something new twenty years down the line?’

‘I’ve absolutely no idea. The brain is a complicated organ. It can block things out to protect a person from whatever horrors they’ve experienced or it can torture them by repeating it over and over.’

‘Fingers crossed for the last option then. Let’s just hope it hasn’t screwed him up too much.’

‘Well I’m expecting him to be a complete basket case. Anything different will be a bonus.’

By the time they arrived at the scene in Whirlow a huge hydraulic excavator was being slowly driven off a low-loader. There was a team of more than a dozen workers in HI-Vis safety gear milling about preparing to begin.

The house had been surrounded by large plywood sheets to stop potential thieves or squatters gaining access and this was now being taken down. Two members of the team donned hard hats and entered the property via the back door. They were to give the house a final sweep just to make sure a homeless person wasn’t taking shelter, before the house was pulled down.

Matilda pulled up a few hundred yards away from the house. From the back seat she lifted a pile of papers: the reports she had taken home and Charlie Johnson’s book, which she was almost halfway through, and began flicking through them.

‘I was talking to my fiancée about the Harkness case last night and she had a look on the Internet about it while I was in the shower. She thinks Matthew may have a part to play in the murders.’

‘Does she?’ Matilda replied, not paying much attention.

‘It makes sense if you think about it. He wasn’t in the house at the time and he went missing soon afterwards. It was days before he was found and he had no alibi.’

‘He had no motive either.’

‘All kids have a motive for killing their parents, no matter how tenuous.’

She wondered whether that was his opinion or that of his fiancée’s. She didn’t say anything.

‘Maybe they’d had an argument; maybe he was jealous of the attention his parents paid towards his younger brother.’

‘The attack was frenzied. Whoever killed them had nothing but hatred for them. It would have had to have been a pretty big argument for him to do that. Besides, if he was jealous of his brother, why not kill him too?’

Rory shrugged.

‘Read chapter ten,’ Matilda said, handing Rory the paperback. ‘Apparently, Jonathan was an accident. His parents rarely had time for him. There was no reason for Matthew to be jealous.’

Extract from
A Christmas Killing
by Charlie Johnson.

‘I just find it odd that he went missing,’ Rory said. ‘I mean, you wouldn’t do that unless you had something to hide.’

‘According to Matthew, when he was eventually found,’ she began, casting her eye down his statement, ‘he had come home and saw the police cars with flashing lights outside the house. He thought his parents had called them as he was late coming home and he just panicked and continued cycling.’

‘But his parents weren’t thick; they’d have just called the parents of the friend he was staying with. They wouldn’t call the police.’

‘His parents weren’t thick but maybe he was.’

‘I’m sorry but I don’t buy it. He was missing for three days before just turning up out of the blue. If he was worried about getting into trouble for being late home he would have stayed away just the one night, not for three, not in the middle of winter.’

‘Unfortunately,’ Matilda began, flicking through the three-page statement, ‘it doesn’t go into a great deal of detail. It doesn’t even say where he was hiding, for crying out loud. All it says is that he was hiding in the woods. Sheffield is one of the greenest cities in the country; it’s surrounded by bloody woods.’

‘Is Matthew still in Sheffield?’

‘No. He moved away as soon as his education was finished. I’ve no idea where he is now. We’ll have to try and track him down. These case notes are pitiful.’

She closed the file in frustration and looked up as the roaring sound of the hydraulic excavator slowly moved onto the plot of the Harkness house. It was demolition time.

A few nosy neighbours had congregated. They were dressed appropriately in long coats, hats, and scarves. They had their hands firmly in their pockets to keep warm or their arms wrapped tightly around their bodies. Some people didn’t care about the cold; they just wanted to be witness to an event that would go down in local history.

From a nearby Mondeo a young man in his early thirties wearing an open-necked shirt, faded blue trousers, and scuffed black shoes climbed out from behind the steering wheel. From the passenger seat, a gruff-looking man close to retirement hoisted himself out with a large camera around his neck.

‘Bloody press,’ Matilda said under her breath.

‘Are we getting out?’ Rory asked.

‘No I don’t…’ she stopped when her eyes fell on something of interest. She quickly scanned through the reports in front of her once again and found what she was looking for: a photograph. She looked up through the windscreen then down at the picture again.

‘Do you reckon that’s Jonathan Harkness?’ She showed Rory the photo of an eleven-year-old Jonathan in school uniform. He was looking directly into the camera lens and had a forced smile on his face. It was obviously a school photograph and he didn’t seem too pleased to be having it taken.

Rory looked at the picture then up at the young man in the black coat who was standing away from the crowd on his own. ‘It looks like him. Same build, same hair.’

‘Come on then.’ She whipped off her seatbelt and jumped out of the car.

Shortly after arriving at his childhood home, Jonathan saw the journalist and photographer climbing out of their car. He hoped they wouldn’t recognize him and lifted up his coat collar. He was standing alone, away from the crowd of ghoulish onlookers, but wondered if this might draw attention to the reporter so he slowly edged back to join them.

As soon as the large hydraulic excavator made its way onto the overgrown garden where he used to play, his attention was firmly aimed at the home he was born in.

His heart was beating loudly in his ears and he took a deep breath. He was dressed for the weather, wrapped up in scarf and gloves, but he was shivering underneath his thick winter coat. His mouth was dry and he swallowed painfully a few times. He watched as the arm was slowly raised a little higher than the roof. The bucket was angled and just as it made contact with the house he closed his eyes tight. The crunching sound caused him to jump. He opened his eyes and saw the large hole in what used to be his bedroom.

A large section of the front of the house was soon torn down and for the first time in more than twenty years, daylight penetrated the rooms. He looked up at the damaged building and saw the blue and white striped wallpaper that adorned the walls of his sanctuary.

He hadn’t realized how much this was going to affect him. As soon as he saw the wallpaper he could feel a lump in his throat and tears gathering in his eyes. He was hoping for a cathartic experience, closure maybe, but he couldn’t cope with this. It was killing him. The crowd of gawkers around him gossiped among themselves; their voices fighting with the noise from the demolition site.

‘That used to be such a beautiful house. What a waste.’

‘That place always gave me the creeps. It should have been torn down years ago.’

‘Can you imagine what went on in there?’

‘I wonder what those poor kids are up to these days.’

‘I used to have that wallpaper in my back bedroom.’

As Jonathan walked away he was stopped by a tired-looking woman and a sharply dressed young man behind her. He wondered if they were more reporters. Bloody vultures.

‘Are you Jonathan Harkness?’ Matilda asked.

‘Who?’ His voice was gruff, his throat still dry.

‘You are aren’t you? Don’t worry; I’m not from the newspapers.’ She fished her ID from her inside pocket. ‘I’m Detective Chief Inspector Matilda Darke, this is Detective Constable Rory Fleming. We’re from the Murder Investigation Team at South Yorkshire Police. Would it be possible to have a few words?’

Jonathan looked from Matilda to Rory then back again. ‘I’m sorry but I’m about to go to work.’

The sound of a wall collapsing behind them broke their concentration. Both Matilda and Rory looked in the direction of the house while Jonathan closed his eyes. The agony of grief and terror was etched on his face.

‘I understand this is a very difficult day for you Mr Harkness but we’d just like a brief chat.’

‘I don’t have anything to say.’

He looked sad. His face was pale and his blue eyes dull. He had the look of someone on the brink of tears.

‘We’re having another look at the case.’

‘What?’ Now Matilda had his full attention. He looked genuinely shocked. ‘Why?’

‘We review cold cases every so often, and with the demolition we’ve decided to take another look.’

‘Is there new evidence?’

‘We don’t know yet.’

‘Look, between the book and your archives you pretty much have all the information there is.’

‘You’re right, there is plenty of information, but there’s one thing missing: your statement.’