Martin Edwards - The Coffin Trail

‘The possibility of pagan ritual.’ Gul Khan wasn’t quite licking his lips, but he did sound hopeful. He preferred his work to be enlivened by a touch of the bizarre.

‘We couldn’t find any evidence to support any meaningful link to witchcraft or Druids or any of that garbage. The likeliest scenario involved Barrie Gilpin’s well-documented fascination with the legends of Brackdale. The smart money was on his having a warped idea of sexual fulfilment. Maybe that caused him to lay out his victim’s corpse on the Sacrifice Stone.’

‘Gabrielle wouldn’t be the first young woman to be murdered because she led a man on and then turned him down,’ Nick Lowther said.

‘Sure,’ Hannah said. ‘But Ben Kind didn’t leap to the conclusion that nobody other than Barrie could have killed her. Joe Dowling’s wife was away that night and there was nobody to back up the story that he took to his bed because of illness. Tom Allardyce, we’ve spoken about. His wife gave him an alibi, although her disappearance is a cause for concern. Has there been a rift between them? We need to speak to her urgently.’

‘Yeah,’ Gul said. ‘Marital discord doesn’t half give us some opportunities.’

Hannah cringed inwardly. In her flattest, least emotional tone, she explained that fresh information had come to light. Joe Dowling and Gabrielle might have had a fling and a large and unexplained wad of cash had been seen in her room shortly before she died. No need to reveal the source of the leads at this stage, even though Dale would need to be re-interviewed. One thing was for certain: it wouldn’t be wise for Hannah to question her, even if she could bring herself to do so.

‘Could the killer have wanted to conceal his victim’s identity?’ Linz suggested. ‘Or did he think she was someone else?’

‘We didn’t devote much time to those possibilities,’ Hannah said. ‘There wasn’t any doubt who she was. Plenty of people had talked to her during her few days in Brackdale. And despite the damage done to her face, once she was tidied up, she was still recognisable. Tash Dumelow didn’t have any trouble in identifying her.’

‘What about Gabrielle’s previous life?’ Maggie asked. ‘Anything in it that might cast light on her murder?’

‘Tash Dumelow helped us to build a victim profile. The long and short of it was, Gabrielle Anders was a drifter. A sexy drifter, but a drifter all the same.’

Les Bryant said, ‘Which is why I thought we should take a fresh look at her past. We don’t have anything new on her time in the States and I can’t believe it would help us anyway. But her years in Leeds — that’s another story.’

‘As I mentioned yesterday,’ Hannah said, ‘Les has been speaking with colleagues in West Yorkshire. This morning, he’s come up with something fresh. Over to you, Les.’

He joined her at the front of the room and cleared his throat. ‘Tash Dumelow was a good friend of Gabrielle, and for a couple of years she seems to have been closer to her than anyone. But she had to admit that Gabrielle was less successful with acting than with taking big money from rich businessmen in city centre hotels.’

Linz said, ‘You’re not suggesting all this cash she had was payment for services rendered from Joe Dowling?’

‘Unlikely,’ Hannah said. ‘He’s famous for his tight fists. I can’t believe he’d part with his life savings, however good she was. Free board and lodging would be closer to the mark.’

‘Maybe he saves up for the little treats that girls like Gabrielle can provide,’ Bob Swindell suggested.

‘And the money was never found?’ Maggie looked up. ‘Could we have stumbled across a different motive for murder here?’

‘Good question.’ Gul was eager. ‘All along, we’ve assumed this is a sex crime. The nature of the killing, the place where the body was found, everything points in that direction. But what if someone killed her for the cash and then laid a false trail?’

‘Did she have a criminal record?’ Linz asked.

‘Of course we made a routine check at the outset,’ Hannah said. ‘Only to draw a blank.’

‘I blame the bloody Data Protection Act,’ Les said. ‘All this European shit about human rights and civil liberties. People are scared stiff of putting anything down in black and white. Everyone’s afraid the written records will come back and bite them when the bureaucrats find out. Result: you have to rely on word of mouth. So I talked off the record to people who worked in vice ten years ago and more, just to see if the name meant anything to them. Guess what? A DS I used to work with remembered her vividly.’

‘That’s the trouble with being drop-dead gorgeous,’ Bob Swindell said. ‘Too memorable. No use for undercover work. Aren’t you glad you’re not a blonde, Linz?’

Linz stuck her tongue out by way of reply, but when Les glared at them, they shifted uncomfortably and shut up.

‘Now then,’ he said. ‘Gabrielle was seeing a crooked businessman by the name of Webber. He was half-Jamaican, half-Tyke, and he had his finger in various pies, if you’ll pardon my French. Including a brothel in Bradford and a night club in Leeds. He made his money as a small-time builder and he kept the business going mainly as a convenient way of laundering drug profits. He was implicated in a number of serious assaults and at least two murders of business rivals, but there was no evidence. Surprise, surprise, the CPS wouldn’t dream of prosecuting without being presented with a cast-iron case and the CID would never have found anyone willing to testify. People used to wet themselves at the prospect of crossing Eldine Webber.’

He paused for effect, building suspense like a Yorkshire Hitchcock. Linz shuffled her feet impatiently, prompting Maggie to frown a rebuke.

‘And then one day, Vice got a lucky break. Webber was found dead in his penthouse near City Square. A cocktail of booze and drugs had done for him. Sad to say, he choked on his own vomit.’ A melancholy smile. ‘The verdict was accidental death, but the circumstances of Webber’s passing were a tad mysterious. He was alone when he was found, but rumours began to surface that Gabrielle had been seen with him on the night he died. By the time of the inquest, she’d disappeared.’

After the team had digested this, Gul asked, ‘So did she murder her sugar daddy?’

Les shrugged. ‘Everyone had their own conspiracy theory. She’d killed him deliberately, she’d killed him accidentally, he’d died during a sex game and there’d been a cover up. One suggestion was that his enemies had paid her to kill him while his pants were down.’

‘West Yorkshire never got to the bottom of it?’ Bob smirked.

Les’s dour expression didn’t flicker. ‘Let’s just say, not many tears were shed about his passing.’

‘Simon Dumelow is in the property business too, isn’t he?’ Maggie asked.

Hannah nodded. ‘These days he plays the local squire. Opens the village fete and pays for the bouncy castle at the primary school sports day. His buildings win awards and he has a high ranking in the North West rich list. It wasn’t always that way. Construction’s a rough industry and most people in it get their first leg up the ladder by breaking a few rules. Occasionally a few heads. But Dumelow’s never been convicted of anything worse than speeding.’

‘That’s a hanging offence, mind, if some chief constables are to be believed,’ Bob muttered.

Linz said, ‘Any connection between him and Webber?’

Hannah said, ‘There’s no evidence whatsoever to suggest it, but then we didn’t know about the rumours of Gabrielle’s involvement with Webber’s death. Simon Dumelow maintained that the first time he met Gabrielle was when she turned up on his doorstep to renew her acquaintance with his wife. At the time we had no reason to doubt that. And his wife gave him an alibi for the night of the murder.’