An Early Grave Read online

  In his daydreaming, he’d hardly noticed the stranger mounting the steps to the north aisle of the Quire. He thought perhaps they needed a gentle hint to consider their leaving. It was after five o’clock. Downton Abbey on telly this evening and he had still to decide what to do about food. When he reached the north aisle, he saw no one but soon realised the visitor had descended to the northwest transept, to the Martyrdom.

  ‘Excuse me,’ Peter called politely from the top of the steps. ‘May I be of assistance? The Cathedral is actually closed for the evening. Perhaps, if you’re looking for something in particular?’

  The stranger stood upon the tile in the floor, marked in red with the name Thomas, the place where, it was said, Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury, had been murdered in 1170. On the wall, above a plinth of granite, hung three old and battered swords, one of which had shattered at the tip when the skull of Thomas had been sliced open.

  Slowly, the stranger turned to face him.

  ‘Good Lord,’ said Peter, cheerfully. ‘I never thought I’d ever see you in here.’ He quickly descended the steps to greet his visitor.

  ‘Hello, Peter. You always said you’d be an Archbishop someday.’

  ‘I’m not quite that…’ Peter laughed, his hand outstretched in greeting. But, to his surprise, the visitor did not reciprocate. Feeling awkward, Peter dropped his hand to his side.

  ‘Merely another turbulent priest?’

  ‘Steady on. It’s been such a long time.’ Peter suddenly felt cold. ‘Why have you come…?’

  ‘You already know the answer, Peter. To free you from your past. It’s the price I must pay for your silence.’

  The hand-axe appeared quickly. Peter had no time. He had no expectation of disaster. The first swipe caught his left ear and sent him sprawling over the plinth beneath the swords. The second came with greater force and truer aim. Downwards, between his eyes. Peter died instantly. No need for a third blow. Or a fourth. The fifth split his skull wide open, brain and bone coming away as the weapon was retracted. The killer shook the bloodied mess off the axe, scattering it across the floor. Thick dark blood flowed over the tile marked with the name of Thomas. Pulling a small white towel from a deep pocket, the killer wiped the axe clean, stepped over the body and draped the stained cloth upon the butchered face of Peter Ramsey.

  CHAPTER 3

  Treadwater Estate, Netherton, Liverpool.

  Days like this, Tara Grogan wondered if she was cut out for the job. She didn’t even look the part. Five-foot-one, a face that despite its twenty-seven years still required ID to gain entrance to some of the nightclubs she frequented with girlfriends, Aisling and Kate. At work she kept her shoulder-length golden blonde hair pulled back to a stern pony-tail. She reduced to a minimum but could never venture out without some make-up, usually resorting to mascara, a pink lipstick and some foundation to add health to an otherwise pale complexion. Her friends still chuckled at her having to buy her clothes from the early teenage range in Debenhams. In flat shoes, black trousers and jacket over a white blouse, all concealed beneath the requisite white overall, she felt neither attractive nor warm. Not in here. Her skin oozed a cold sweat. A shiver had taken hold from her lower back to the base of her skull. How do you ever get used to a scene like this? Her more experienced colleagues told her it was always better to look. See the victim and you won’t stop searching for the killer. The house was filling with people. She heard the forensics team lining the hall waiting to resume their work. They’d done their initial inspection of the scene, and the duty medical officer had examined the body. Now it was their turn. Detective Sergeant Murray stood beside her in the back bedroom, sparsely furnished but for the double bed and the body lying upon it. Flimsy curtains of primrose were drawn, obscuring the dreary day. A thin, dark blue carpet covered the floor but did nothing for the creak of boards as her boss, Superintendent Harold Tweedy, paced around the bed.

  Tara needed fresh air. She’d seen enough. The image of the girl lying naked, smothered quite probably, and the sickening marks across her chest would be with her for a long time. She wouldn’t need a reminder.

  ‘Is that a word?’ said Tweedy, his voice always one of concern, of empathy. A bible basher, Murray called him, an inference to his lay-preaching at his local Baptist church.

  DS Murray studied the letters on the girl’s chest.

  ‘Fag burns, I’d say.’

  ‘Yes, but surely they form a word?’ said Tweedy.

  Tara cocked her head to the side. She tried to form each letter, roughly sketched and uneven. It seemed to her they had been applied to the girl’s skin after death, because there was little swelling. At least she hoped the poor kid hadn’t been tortured before she died. Each crooked letter was around two inches in height.

  ‘K…U…R…W…A,’ said Tara.

  ‘Kurwa? Doesn’t mean anything,’ said Murray.

  ‘Doesn’t have to be English.’

  She’d really had enough of this. The room stank of sweat and cigarette smoke. She would be sick in a minute if she didn’t get some fresh air.

  ‘Right,’ said Tweedy. ‘We’ll get out now, and let Forensics continue their work.’

  Tweedy was first out of the door, followed by Murray. Tara was thereby granted the final look at the young girl. No more than seventeen, lying on her back, spindly arms by her sides, legs spread apart, the sheet beneath her stained with urine. Her death-grey flesh looked bruised in places, on her neck and upper arms, the effects of lividity, the accumulation of blood under the skin after death. The skin was smooth except for the letters branded above her tiny swellings of breasts. Her fingers were curled as though her hands had been clenched to fists but then had flexed open at the moment of death. The face was blue-grey, indicative, Tara supposed, of suffocation. But for that she might only have been in a deep sleep. How bizarre to have three strangers staring down upon your naked body as you slept. The girl’s hair was short and reddish-brown; the only warm colour in the room. Tara hurried after her colleagues as two forensics guys squeezed past on the stairs.

  Outside, at the rear of the terraced house, a cordon of police incident tape had been stretched across the cul-de-sac, preventing access to the rear of the houses, the parking area and the lock-up garages. The houses were late fifties - early sixties, built in blocks of five, each block facing outwards to landscaped areas of lawns, criss-crossed by pathways leading nowhere in particular. At the time, the estate was intended as the new age in social housing, with pleasant areas of open space, playing fields, houses accessed at the front via walkways, while to the rear there were parking areas and lock-up garages. Treadwater had been the future of community living in Liverpool, with estates just like it going up all over the city and in many others across Britain. Of course, with such careful planning no one foresaw the social ills that would eventually turn some of them into ghettos and hotbeds of unemployment, drug dealing and reckless vandalism. Council attempts to improve matters were ongoing, resulting in a patchwork of new housing initiatives splattered across the bleak remnants of earlier times. Many of the older houses were privately owned and boasted kitchen extensions, conservatories and PVC double-glazing, thanks to the Thatcher years. Treadwater was never a place in which Tara could have imagined working, not if you were raised in a quiet village like Caldy. Never mind the location; eight years ago she could not have envisaged a career in the Merseyside Police. Somehow, naïvely, she imagined when she first joined the force that she would never have to deal with murder. Naïve indeed. It didn’t take long to discover there could be a hundred different reasons for wiping out someone’s life.

  She joined DS Murray and DC John Wilson at the back gate of the house. Murray, a thirty-six-year-old, had a number one cut, although baldness wasn’t far off, a fat face and neck, thin lips and small teeth that diminished his attempts at a broad smile. As far as Tara was concerned, he was tolerable.

  A young officer of twenty-two, Wilson had round shoulders and blonde hair in an
old-fashioned short back and sides. He had puffed cheeks, giving the impression of sunken blue eyes and a distrusting look of someone who had already experienced too many of life’s troubles. He was tall like Murray but much broader, although for Tara most of her colleagues towered above her. But she had sufficient confidence to know she matched them in many other respects.

  Tweedy had left them to carry out house to house inquiries and to speak with the medical officer to give them a heads up on cause and time of death. He would check with them later. As they dispensed with the white overalls, Murray assumed a modicum of command. He had a tendency to overlook or deliberately ignore that Tara was a Detective Inspector to his Sergeant. She chose her moments carefully to remind him of the fact. Right now, she was prepared to let him off with it.

  ‘John, you take the far side and work around,’ said Murray. ‘I’ll start next door, and we can meet in the middle.’ That left the medical officer for Tara. She didn’t need telling. She noticed the pair smirking and was going to speak out when she realised they weren’t looking at her but beyond towards the entrance of the cul-de-sac.

  ‘Here we go,’ said Murray. ‘Friggin’ idiot.’

  Tara spun round in time to see a man duck under the police tape and continue on his way along the pavement. He had a peculiar stride that seemed quick, but his length of step was short giving the impression of a man walking in an old silent movie. A small dog, the size of a Jack Russell but of no recognisable breed, waddled along twenty feet ahead. The man was a bit of a sight: navy jacket, double-breasted - the top half of an old suit - dark green jogging trousers with a grey stripe down the seam of each leg, and a pair of brown brogue shoes. His black hair, soaked with rain, drooped to his shoulders, and an untidy beard obscured the features of his face. A carrier bag hung from each hand, one holding a carton of full cream milk and a tin of baked beans, the other, a sliced loaf and a box of Cornflakes. He seemed oblivious to anyone around him, certainly ignorant of the reason for police incident tape. Tara’s colleagues sniggered.

  ‘Who is that?’ she asked. Funny he may look but she found it hard to laugh after what she had witnessed inside the house.

  ‘The local head case,’ Murray replied. She looked sternly at her colleague then called out to the man.

  ‘Excuse me, sir. There’s a police investigation going on at the moment. Can you go around by the front of the houses?’

  The man increased his pace. The dog appeared to do the same. Murray and Wilson giggled like a pair of schoolgirls.

  ‘Run, Forrest, run,’ Murray sniggered.

  ‘Will you two be quiet?’

  Tara went after him. By the time she’d reached the middle of the road both man and dog had made the end of the cul-de-sac by the lock-ups, turned around, and were headed back the way they had come. She waited for him to draw level.

  ‘There’s a police investigation underway. Would you mind staying outside the cordon?’

  He stopped and turned to face her. Bedraggled and dirty, he was thin, scrawny even, and his shoulders appeared to sag from the strain of carrying a few groceries. Beneath the jacket, he wore a plain grey T-shirt that looked in dire need of washing. She drew closer, noting his dark but washed-out eyes, the whites bloodshot. His breath stank of beer and garlic. The man seemed more interested in where his dog was headed.

  ‘Do you mind telling me where you are going?’

  ‘Home.’

  ‘And where would that be?’

  With a slight movement of his head he indicated the entrance to the cul-de-sac, the opposite direction to where he had first been walking.

  ‘Then why did you walk under the tape?’

  ‘Midgey always comes this way.’ He glanced beyond her, to where Murray and Wilson were standing, looking on, amused grins still present.

  ‘Well, I would appreciate it if you stayed the other side of the tape for now.’ She watched his eyes darting from her colleagues to his dog, which by now had reached the last house in the row, and then back to her. When they appeared to settle on her for a time she spoke again, hoping that at last she had his full attention.

  ‘I’m Detective Inspector Tara Grogan.’

  He was staring now, looking her up and down.

  ‘Can you tell me anything about the people living in that house?’ She pointed at the house then checked the notebook in her hand. ‘Number six.’ He made no reply but maintained his staring. Unkempt beard and heavy eyes gave him a look of menace. Wouldn’t be hard to suspect him of murder. ‘Have you noticed anything suspicious in this area in the last few hours? Or yesterday, maybe?’

  This time he shook his head slowly, but his eyes remained firmly upon Tara. She thought him rude, vacant, and certainly not forthcoming.

  ‘Can I take a note of your name please?’

  ‘Callum.’

  She glared at his blank expression, waiting for more. She could be there all day; he had nothing to add.

  ‘Do you have a surname?’ she asked sardonically.

  ‘Armour.’

  ‘And your address?’

  ‘Over there.’

  ‘Which is?’

  ‘Twenty-four.’

  She wrote the scant details on her notepad, then removed a card from her jacket pocket and handed it to the man.

  ‘If you remember anything, those are my contact details.’ He took the card without comment, and for a second they remained staring at each other. ‘You can go now,’ she said.

  Mechanically, he turned to his right and paced away in the direction of his home. Tara watched him go, thinking him very strange and wondering why he hadn’t asked what had occurred in his street that required police detectives.

  ‘How’d you get on with our Dr Stinker then?’ Wilson asked when Tara re-joined them at the gate.

  ‘Stinker?’

  Murray laughed.

  ‘Term of endearment round here for the likes of him.’

  ‘Paedo,’ said Wilson.

  Tara shuddered at the thought.

  ‘Is he really?’

  Murray shook his head. His bulbous eyes had fire in them, feisty and spirited. He was usually well focussed on the job despite his flippant answers to sensible questions.

  ‘No record as such,’ he said. ‘No reason to believe he’s that way inclined, but it doesn’t stop the local gobshites from sticking a label on you. We’ve been called out to his house at least a dozen times in the last couple of years. He’s either been attacked, his house broken into, or bottles thrown at his windows. Kids. They think it’s a laugh. Scares the shit out of the poor sod, though.’

  ‘And why Doctor?’

  ‘Bright spark of some sort. Went a bit loopy after his wife and child were killed. Full of conspiracy theories and all that nonsense.’

  ‘He’s harmless,’ said Wilson. ‘I grew up round here. So did Armour. Most people who’ve been here for years know him well. It’s only the young ones give him any grief.’

  Tara watched the man as he opened his back door.

  *

  Stepping inside, he stole a glance at her then shut the door firmly behind him. He set the bags of shopping on the draining board by the sink and peered through his wire-screened window towards the house where the police were milling around. In particular, he watched the girl. Pretty, stern too, with determined blue eyes and a small mouth that he reckoned held a sharp no-nonsense tongue. He read the small card in his hand, her name and a telephone number of St. Anne Street Station upon it. He knew that name. He was certain he’d seen her before.

  A few steps took him from his kitchen through a darkened hallway into his sitting room. The large window was screened with wire mesh like that of the kitchen. He could see out well enough, but anyone on the outside had a harder job seeing in. It was filthy on the outside, too, and with the screens fixed in place was not easy to clean. Despite the mesh protection, the glass had a huge crack running from the centre to the bottom right-hand corner. The sitting room looked cramped but had little furniture.
A scuffed leather two-seater sofa sat against the wall, opposite a fire place that his late father had boarded up years ago. Instead he had electric storage radiators in each room. It was just possible to decipher a coffee table, close to the window, covered in newspapers, magazines, empty take-away cartons, pizza boxes, coffee mugs and a couple of photographs in cheap frames. The remaining space in the room scarcely allowed entry from the hall, access to the coffee table or to the single armchair sitting by the wall opposite the window. Bundles of newspapers, text books and several dozen box-files occupied most of the floor space in the room. The only seat available for use was the armchair, but it was far from a conventional piece of furniture, constructed entirely from bundles of newspapers tied with string and used as building blocks. The dog had its favourite place and lay down on an old door mat under the coffee table.

  Mumbling to himself, he began a search of the room, lifting one pile of magazines, transferring them to another, before up-turning the lot and starting over. He knew he’d seen her face before, and his attempts to find her grew more frantic as he shuffled magazines, newspapers and supplements, one stack toppling into another. Several minutes later, his hand finally pulled a magazine from the jumble on the floor. He stared at the cover, flicked it open and leafed through it, excitedly. On the penultimate page he found her, the image that struck him the second he’d fixed his eyes on Detective Inspector Tara Grogan. He examined the coloured photograph, a little grainy, but there was no doubting. First instincts absolutely correct. He read the single paragraph below the picture giving brief details on the life of Tara Grogan. With her background, she could be the one to help him. She could find the man who killed his wife and daughter.