Michael Fowler - Secret of the Dead

There was silence as Duncan’s words sunk in. The magnitude of the task ahead to catch the culprit who had done this, was daunting.

The Detective Superintendent’s head was bowed, as if in prayer.

Suddenly she clapped her hands, making everyone jump. She announced, “Okay, no time for hanging around, we’ve got a murderer, or murderers, to catch.” She turned to Hunter and Grace. “I want you two to go straight across to Guy Armstrong’s place and see what you can find. If you can’t find a key lying around, and he hasn’t left one with neighbours, force entry. Get someone else to help you search. See what Mike and Tony are doing. I’ll clear it with DI Scaife to release them from their immediate tasks.”

“What about Jodie’s PM this afternoon?”

“It’s not going ahead today, Hunter. The Coroner rang Mr Robshaw this morning. He only got the message first thing, so we can’t get hold of another pathologist to carry it out until tomorrow. To be honest it’ will give us a bit of breathing space, especially as headquarters have told us there are no more resources. There was a double-fatal shooting yesterday evening in Sheffield, so we’ve got to make do with what we’ve got.”

“What about Task Force?”

“I’ve managed to snaffle one search team, the bulk of the team have been drafted in to Sheffield for the shootings. It’s believed to be gang related. I’m meeting with them here…” she paused and took a quick glance of her watch, “…in the next half hour or so. They’re gonna do a search here first, and then I’ve earmarked them to go over to the Barnwell Inn to carry out an extensive search of the building and grounds, once Duncan and his team have finished doing a second sweep.”

Out of the corner of his eye Hunter caught Duncan’s expression. He’d never seen the man look so stressed. He looked as though he had the weight of the world on his shoulders, thought Hunter. This enquiry is certainly testing people’s limits of endurance. He grabbed Grace’s arm to get her attention, nodded back towards the car and mouthed, ‘it’s time to go.’

As they trudged back to the car Grace mumbled, “That’s me in the bad books again when I get home tonight.” She turned to Hunter. “Correction, change that to if I get home tonight!”

* * * * *

DCs Mike Sampson and Tony Bullars were already waiting outside Guy Armstrong’s 1970s semi, by the time Hunter and Grace showed up.

Mike jokingly mentioned that they’d left a DI back at the office very displeased after having his instructions usurped by an ‘incomer’. Mike wiggled his index fingers in the air as he mouthed the word.

“We’ve just left her at the crash site,” Grace said.

“What do you make of her?” asked Tony.

They were close to the front of the house.

“I’m having difficulty understanding what she’s saying,” said Mike. “I’m having to watch back-to-back episodes of Taggart so that I can get to grips with her accent.” He paused then said “There’s been a murder,” exaggerating the rolling of his ‘r’s.’

The team burst out laughing.

“You’d better not let her hear you say that,” said Grace. “Anyway, I think she’s lovely. It’s just what you men need, a strong woman to put you in your places.”

The four of them enthusiastically set about door knocking in the hope that one of Guy Armstrong’s immediate neighbours might hold a spare key to his house. No one did. They followed up by ferreting around the perimeter of his home, but despite a thorough search of all the usual hiding-places they didn’t turn anything up and checked if any of the ground floor windows were insecure. No luck.

Disappointed, Hunter said, “No other option but to kick the door in.” He nodded to Tony. “The back door looks the best bet, Bully.”

“You want me to do it?” he said.

“Who’s the one with the stripes? Stop whingeing and get your shoulder against it. It’s not as though you’ve never done this before. What about that time you nicked those two muggers you chased to someone else’s flat? You told the neighbours you thought you could smell gas.”

Tony tried to suppress a smile. “I could!”

“Well pretend you can smell it now and get that door in.”

Using the heel of his foot, it took Tony Bullars half-a-dozen attempts before the mortise lock finally gave way. With a resounding crack, the solid-wood door crashed against the kitchen wall, its metal security hasp shooting across the laminate floor.

“Right everyone,” said Hunter, stepping into the kitchen and slipping on a pair of latex gloves, “We take a room each. I’ll take the lounge.”

Unpleasant smells greeted him as he stepped further into the house. As he passed through the kitchen into the hallway, his nose picked up the stench of old cooking fat. The untidy work surfaces were spilling over with various plates and cups, stained by remnants of food, and a frying pan, which contained globules of furred fat floating on top of an oily surface.

Then he pushed open the door into the lounge and the sight which met him was not pleasant. The pattern of the carpet was barely visible, every inch covered by a sea of paper. Some was torn handwritten sheets from notebooks, but the majority was from newspapers. The room also contained a sofa and two armchairs. Only the seat cushion of one chair was visible the other two pieces of furniture were piled high with books and more newspapers.

Hunter sighed. This lot was going to take an eternity to sift through, he thought.

As he bent down to scoop up the first batch of handwritten notes, a cry came from upstairs. It was Mike Sampson.

“Get up here you lot and just have a butcher’s at this!”

Hunter took the stairs two at a time and met Mike on the landing.

Grace and Tony were not far behind.

Their colleague’s outstretched arm pointed into one of the rear bedrooms.

Hunter poked his head inside. What he saw took him completely by surprise. The room had been kitted out as an office-cum-study. It contained a desk and chair and a bookcase crammed with books. The desk overflowed with pile upon pile of handwritten notes and like the lounge below, every inch of floor space was taken up by handwritten notes on different types of paper. However, it was the stuff on the walls that grabbed his attention. Pasted, Sellotaped, stuck, and pinned, to every conceivable inch of space on three walls was an array of photographs, newspaper cuttings, hand-drawn diagrams, and copious Post-it notes containing scribbled information. Some of it was new, but the majority of the items had the patina signs of ageing.

Hunter turned to his colleagues. “You know what this is, don’t you?” He didn’t wait for a response. “This is everything relating to the Lucy Blake-Hall case. This is Guy Armstrong’s very own incident room.”

DAY TEN: 3RD DECEMBER.

Barnwell MIT incident room was crammed to capacity for morning briefing. More members of the Cold Case Unit had been drafted in, together with another Family Liaison Officer. An Inspector and Sergeant from Task Force were also present. For some it was standing room only, and the office was uncomfortably warm despite the biting wind and rain battering against the windows.

SIOs Michael Robshaw and Dawn Leggate held court together at the front of the room. Another incident board had joined those of Jeffery Howson’s, Lucy Blake-Hall’s and Jodie Marie Jenkinson’s. This one was full of information and photographs from their most recent murder case Guy Armstrong.

It was seven pm the previous evening before Hunter, Grace, Mike and Tony had left Armstrong’s house. What they had uncovered in his study had been a revelation. Newspaper cuttings and original black-and-white photographs from The Barnwell Chronicle, together with other national and regional tabloid newspaper articles, covered every conceivable bit of space around his small upstairs room. Additionally, blanketing the floor, were dozens of other discarded black-and-white photographs, together with smaller colour shots, as well as hundreds of handwritten notes, chronicling every event, from Lucy being reported as missing, the arrest of Daniel Weaver and the subsequent search of Langsett Moor for Lucy’s body, up to the eventual trial and guilty verdict of Weaver during 1983 and 1984.