This Thing of Darkness (3 page)

A line of chalk marks dandles up the cliff. Up into the overhang and out of it. Marks left by passing climbers.

Although this whole coast is rocky and abrupt, the cliffs themselves are quite variable. Sometimes crags rise a hundred feet in a single swoop of limestone. Elsewhere, they’re just a mass of broken rock and tussocky grass. None of the ground is easy, however, and the weather directly following the death was stormy and wet.

The crime scene investigation report commented,
Only a limited examination of the descent route was possible, owing to difficult access conditions and adverse weather conditions.
I can imagine it: a plump SOCO in a hi-vis jacket, dangling on a rope in a wicked sea-wind. Spray from the ocean and a storm blowing in. How much investigation would truly have taken place under those circumstances? And with accidental death already the only likely verdict?

Injury to lower right parietal bone presumably inflicted by rock on descent
.

Impact site not conclusively located
.

Was it not conclusively located because no one ever properly looked? Or because it wasn’t there?

On a true murder inquiry, those sorts of questions never go unanswered. Officers and resources are flung at the problem until those little wrinkles get fully de-wrinked. But when you have an inquiry whose whole shape, from the outset, is tilting towards a verdict of Accidental Death, no one will authorise the expense involved to tease out those last little puzzles.

Presumably inflicted.

Not conclusively
.

Evasive words. Snaky.

I stare up at the cliff, trying to imagine the line of flight, until I realise that the tide is still coming in, washing at sands that had been dry when I arrived.

I struggle back. I’m soaked already, but the parts that were thigh-deep before are waist-deep now and, when a bigger than normal wave comes in, I find myself lifted off the bottom and don’t recover my footing until the backwash drops me.

But I make it back. Crawl up the slope I descended earlier and hurry back to my Alfa Romeo and the beauty of heated seats.

Putting my now-sodden boots in the back of the car, I notice that my Blackstone’s Policing manuals are still sliding around in there. I’d put them there, intending to do some more revision at home one evening, but it seems like I might have forgotten to do that. Ah well.

I wish I’d brought some dry clothes with me. Or not have got the ones I’m wearing completely soaked. But I have to live with the person I am, not the one I might prefer to be.

I whack the heating up and shiver my way home.

The day ends. And I think I’ve got my murder.

4

That first day with Ifor. The dungeons of CID.

The exhibits rooms are downstairs in the basement. Each room is locked via a keypad to which only the relevant exhibits officer has the code. There are three exhibits rooms, of which only two are in general use. They’re largish, but mostly taken up by racks of metal shelving. Boxes of evidence bags, latex gloves, desiccants, sticky labels. A drying machine, for use with any exhibits that need to be preserved dry.

The clutter, especially the shelving, dominates the room. Ifor’s own desk seems huddled away somehow. Marginal. He has a chair, a desk, a lamp, a computer, a phone, a printer, a desk set with lots of biros, a spidery pot plant, a desk calendar, and a poster of sun shining on a waterfall.

My own table is like an afterthought to an afterthought. A bare table, on which a HOLMES terminal squats, the toad from a fairy tale.

He is a nice man, Ifor. Good at his job. Patient. Doesn’t obviously dislike me. But he is slow. And repetitive. And keeps treating me like an apprentice wanting to learn at her master’s feet.

‘I’ll go on down to Splott now. Pick up the next load.’

‘Not Splott. Tremorfa.’

‘Oh yes. My last job was in Splott. This one’s in Tremorfa.’

‘Yes, you said.’

Twice, in fact.

‘And you’ll get on with the cataloguing?’

‘Yes.’

As we’ve already discussed.

‘And you’re sure you’re OK with the labels?’

‘Yes.’

Ifor looks at me like he can’t quite credit me with that precocious degree of labelling skill. I can see he’s about to ask me again, so I pre-empt him by typing up a label and sending it to the printer. The label says, ‘I’m fine with the labels.’ I stick it, still warm, to my forehead.

Ifor leans in to look, then laughs.

‘You’re very fast on the . . .’ He gestures downwards. ‘The . . .’

‘Keyboard.’

‘Yes.’

Ifor looks like he wants to continue this conversation, which I certainly don’t. I say, ‘I can touch-type. Eighty words a minute when I’m blitzing.’ When that doesn’t achieve an end to the discussion, I add, ‘Which I’ll start doing now.’

I sit at my little table and start work.

Ifor says, ‘Good. OK. And you’re all fine, so I’ll go on down to the scene.’

He looks for the keys to his van, finds them in his pocket, leaves.

I start to catalogue exhibits.

Item description.

Time and date of collection.

Location code of collection.

Cross-reference to pre-collection photographs (if any).

Notes on condition.

Name of forensics officer.

Time and date of pick-up from crime scene.

Officer in charge of transport.

Signature collected?

Signature scanned?

A whole heap of further data covering any forensics activity. Signatures collected and scanned for each chain-of-custody movement. Further data on any additional transport and storage, right down to a location code for the position in the storeroom, so we can find the damn thing if we have to. More data each time a SOCO wants to take a second look at something or Dunthinking gets it into his head that he should show an interest in his own inquiry.

I don’t object to any of this in principle. If we want to send someone to prison, it’s not unreasonable to require that our forensics evidence be bullet-proof. That doesn’t just mean we have to do the science correctly. It also means that we have to be able to prove that the evidence was collected where we said, when we said, and has been kept properly stored and free from interference ever since. If I ever face a serious charge, I’d want those guarantees for myself.

So the principle, I’m fine with. It’s the practice that has me losing my mind.

I work for an hour. Then dive into the documents library and find a photo of the victim, Kirsty Emmett, that I like. One of her at the hospital. A close-up.

Someone has already cleaned her up. Removed mud and blood and grime. Made a basic attempt to comb the dirt and moss and dead leaves from her hair. But for all that, Emmett’s face has the shocked eyes, the empty gaze of real crime. This is what we’re investigating, I think. Those eyes. What happened to make them that way.

I use the photo as my new screensaver. Order the image from the print room, in the largest size they do.

I wonder if anyone thought to collect the soiled tissues from the hospital waste system? Those things should be basic, but nurses don’t think about evidence. Coppers sometimes forget about hospitals. I check the system. And no: no record of the material being collected.

That’s not helpful, but nor is anything else. The victim was struck hard enough that she lost consciousness, she thinks, at points during her ordeal and her recollection is uncertain and scrambled. Her blindfold, crude as it was, meant she did not get a good view of her attacker and she evinces little confidence in the e-fit image she was coaxed to assemble. Her one confidently offered piece of testimony is that the van which deposited her was ‘a large white van, not all that clean, with some markings.’ Since that description fits half the vans in Cardiff – including almost the entire police fleet – it’s not much to work with.

Nevertheless, I continue to do what is now my job.

Collecting data.

Checking data.

Entering data.

Any error, even a small one, could wreck this case.

Two hours in and I call the lab. Ask for half a dozen casts of the security guard’s head wound. The lab had taken a master impression of the injury as part of the inquest process and I’m promised the casts by the end of the week.

Continue to work.

Location codes.

Reference numbers.

Check boxes.

Signing logs.

Three hours in and I have my first thought about self-harm. Wonder whether I could use the stapler to pin my hand to the desk. If I’d feel it, if I did.

Bad thoughts, dark thoughts.

I go outside for a cigarette. I used not to smoke much, not tobacco at any rate, but I started smoking more last year and the habit lingers.

Jon Breakell, a DC and an occasional smoker too, is sheltering in the same insufficient doorway. He’s had the wit to put on an outdoors jacket before leaving the office. I’m in a skirt and white shirt only. Sensible enough kit for data entry. Not good for a chilly outdoor smoke.

‘Aren’t you cold?’ he asks, giving me a light.

‘Jon, if a senior officer orders you to arrest someone, doesn’t that imply an order to investigate first?’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘Are you free this afternoon? I mean, I need someone to accompany me to an interview. Jackson asked me to do it, but he didn’t say who with.’

Jon shrugs. He quite likes me, or likes me enough. He’s also chilled enough not to demand to know too much about Jackson’s specific instructions. ‘Sure, if you want.’

I shrug back. ‘Boss’s orders.’

When Jon pulls on his ciggy, my eyes are drawn to the glowing tip, the whitened ash. When I was in the mental hospital, at least half the patients had scars from self-inflicted cigarette burns. My craziness was normally more intense than that – self-harm never seemed particularly seductive – but I felt the edges of the impulse then. I feel it, more strongly, now.

I stub my cigarette out half-smoked. ‘I’m frozen,’ I say.

Jon looks at me. ‘It
is
March.’

‘Three o’clock? It won’t take long.’

5

Plas Du. My second visit and first official one. The house looks sleeker than it did when I was here last. Lawns newly mown, beds dug over for the spring planting.

‘Nice place,’ says Breakell, as though contemplating a purchase.

‘But poky,’ I say. ‘Where would you put the under butler?’

We park between a silver Mercedes and a glossy little Mini, all cream and white and chrome and edible.

Crunch over to the front door. Breakell wears a grey suit which he likes because, as he told me, ‘It’s washable. You just stick it in the machine.’ He teams his suit with a white shirt, a strangely thin red tie and some black shoes which make a strange squeaky sound when he walks, like the exhalations of a tiny mouse.

At the door, Breakell pushes the bell, smooths his hair.

His ring is answered by a teenaged boy, sixteen or seventeen maybe. Blue T-shirt, jeans. A smirking look, but friendly. We say who we are and he says, ‘Oh
yes
. Yes. Come on through. Real live detectives.’

Neither Jon nor I look much like Columbo, but we do at least look real. The boy – Lockwood’s son, I assume – takes us through to a big, light-filled room. Cream carpet, soft suede sofas. A painting, which might be the Rauschenberg, hangs over a stone fireplace.

A slim woman – cropped trousers, leopard-print shoes, loose green jumper – is talking on the phone. Holds a hand up to us, meaning wait. The boy vanishes. Jon and I hang around, looking at the Rauschenberg and try to see if we can see two million quid in it.

On a side table, there are some silver-framed family photos. The boy who opened the door to us is there. Ollie, I know from the police files. Also a girl, Francesca, a couple of years older than her brother. There are photos of the children at different ages, together and on their own. Some pictures of them with Lockwood. Some with her and Galton Evans, her ex. But though there are pictures of Ollie, Lockwood and Evans, there’s nothing recent that includes Lockwood, Evans and Francesca. Maybe that’s the result of some deliberate selection policy, but maybe not. You can read too much into things.

The woman finishes her call and approaches. ‘
Hi
. I’m Marianna.
Thank
you for coming out.’

There’s something disconnected between her words and the rest of her. As it happens, I had to push to get an appointment, so if anyone should be thanking anyone it should be us to her. But her handshake is limp, absents itself too early, and her gaze gropes in the space behind my shoulder for someone who isn’t there. I think she’d forgotten we were coming.

I introduce Jon and myself, and conclude, ‘Would you prefer us to call you Mrs Lockwood? Or Marianna?’

Again that absent dart of the eyes, then, ‘Oh, Marianna’s fine. Look, someone should have told you. You didn’t need to come out again about the pictures. They’re here. We got them back.’

I don’t think I actually say anything, but I see Jon’s mouth fall open. Mine the same, I expect.

‘They’re
here
? How were they returned?’

‘I’m not sure. The insurance company sorted it out.’

‘May we see?’

We may.

Lockwood leads us upstairs. A sound of hoovering from behind a closed door. The top floor, the second floor, is lower-ceilinged, but it’s light and somehow better proportioned. A cream-carpeted corridor leads down the centre of the house. On the left: two Picassos and a Matisse. On the right: the other Matisse, plus the Léger and the Braque. A console table, with a vase of silk flowers and a pair of silver candlesticks.

I look at the nearest picture – a Picasso etching – up close. I’m no expert, but it looks like the real deal to me. It has a pencil mark,
2/30
, indicating the print’s number in the edition of thirty.

‘You’ve had these authenticated?’ I say.

‘Oh, these are the ones we lost, all right.’

‘I asked if you’d had them authenticated.’

‘No. Not since they came back.’

‘And the insurance money?’

‘We returned it, of course. We got our pictures back.’

The window, through which Peter Pan once flew, stands at the end of the corridor. The drop, viewed from above, is as sheer as you could ask. The window has been repaired, of course, but the broken pane is still distinct from the others. Newer putty, brighter paint.

We go downstairs. Jon trails behind like a particularly low-rent groupie. I ask Lockwood to give us a moment. She clicks back to her Rauschenberg, leaving us in the cool black and white of the hall.

‘Bish bosh,’ says Jon. ‘Another one bites the dust.’

‘Yes.’

‘Weird though.’

‘Yes.’

There’s a text on my phone from Ifor, wondering where I am.

A fair question.

I stand there not quite knowing what to do.

Jon says, ‘Jackson does know we’re here, doesn’t he?’

I stare at him. Jon’s fairly relaxed, but I don’t think he’d regard ‘Arrest Peter Pan’ as a properly formulated Request for Action.

Jon says, ‘Fi . . .?’

I’m about to agree with him. Bish bosh and head out of the door, out of Marianna Lockwood’s life. But then I think of Ifor’s underground cave. Those metal shelves. The latex gloves and evidence bags. That HOLMES terminal forever blinking.

And I can’t go back there. Just can’t. So I turn on my heel, leave Jon, head back to Lockwood and her Rauschenberg.

Once again, her smile is vague. Generically polite, but specifically absent.

I find myself saying, ‘Mrs Lockwood, I’ve just considered the matter with my colleague, and we have a concern that an offence may have been committed under section 5(2) of the Criminal Law Act 1967, regarding the wasting of police time—’

‘Oh for heaven’s sake!’

‘I’m going to have to ask you to accompany us to the police station in Cathays, where you will be interviewed under caution. You will not have to say anything, but it may harm your defence if you do not mention when questioned something which you later rely on in Court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence. Do you understand?’

‘No, look, it’s ridiculous.’

Because she said she didn’t understand, I start to give her the caution in Welsh. Her right as a citizen of the principality. ‘
Does dim rhaid i chi ddweud dim byd, ond gall niweidio eich amddiffyniad os na fyddwch chi’n sôn—
’

‘Yes,
OK
.
I understand. When do you want to do this thing?’ She waves her hand, as though expecting a slim assistant to appear with an iPad and an appointment schedule.

No assistant, no iPad.

I tell her we’re going now, and we do.