Chapter 5
Chapter Five
The storm had caused havoc and destruction across the whole region.
In the early hours of the morning, it had blown out to sea leaving behind damage to property and land with repairs costs running into tens of millions of pounds.
It had also cost the lives of four people.
An elderly couple were driving home to Scarborough from seeing their daughter in Ipswich when a falling tree caused them to swerve.
They ran off the road, down an embankment and overturned.
It was another six hours before they were discovered by road workers clearing the debris.
A young man in his twenties was taking photographs from the seafront in Skegness when he was swept away.
His body was washed up twenty-five miles further south.
The fourth victim of the storm, Alice Patterson, was lying on a gurney in the mortuary waiting for the pathologist, Paul Nash, to begin his work.
He stuck two Polo mints in his mouth and smeared his upper lip with Vicks vapour rub.
He was feeling slightly delicate this morning after having one too many drinks the night before and the last thing he needed was to smell partly digested stomach contents. There was a tap on his door.
‘Are you ready for me?’
‘Not quite. I think you should come and have a look.’
‘What at?’
‘Something’s wrong.’
Nash frowned as he stood up and followed his assistant into the post-mortem suite. He looked at the naked body of Alice Patterson and felt his stomach flip.
‘Alice here was brought in this morning,’ Sarah Clark began.
‘We removed her clothes, bagged them up and washed her, as we always do. However, it’s only when Jill was making a record of the clothes that she realised there was no underwear present.
We’ve had a look, you know, down there, and there’s evidence of bruising and tearing. ’
‘She was raped?’ Nash asked.
‘She could have just had a very energetic sex life.’
‘What does the paperwork say?’ Nash asked, not taking his eyes from Alice.
‘She was a victim of the storm. She was found in woodland with a branch covering her.’
‘Right, well, it’s the job of the police to find out if she was sexually active or not, not ours. We do the post-mortem in the usual way and inform the police of our findings.’ He stepped forward. ‘Scalpel.’ He held out his hand.
Nash leaned down to begin the standard Y-incision and stopped. Frowning, he turned Alice’s head to one side, then the other. He looked back to his assistant.
‘Call the police.’
‘Why?’
‘She’s been strangled.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Of course I’m sure,’ he almost snapped.
‘And by cleaning her up, we’ve washed away all the fucking evidence.
’ He kicked the table, sending the instruments flying.
‘Call the police and get them down here. I’m not doing anything to this girl until there’s someone here who can tell us what the hell is going on. ’
Detective Inspector Henry Bishop was not happy about having his morning disrupted.
His phone hadn’t stopped ringing with people asking bloody stupid questions about incidents caused by the storm.
He’d been out twice already. Once to a body swept up onto a beach and once to a girl found in woods, both of whom had been victims of the bad weather.
He was in CID, for crying out loud, which stood for Criminal Investigation Department.
What was he supposed to do, charge Michael Fish with manslaughter?
He slammed his office door behind him and slumped in the chair behind his desk.
Another report had been added to the pile while he’d been out.
He opened the cover, read the first sentence which mentioned a known sex offender not contacting the local police station for the past three weeks, and closed it again.
More trivial bollocks. He opened his top drawer and removed a screwed-up packet of Benson and Hedges.
He promised his doctor he’d cut down, but you couldn’t be a detective and not smoke, especially with the idiots he had on his team.
There was a knock on his door.
‘Someone had better be fucking dead,’ he bellowed.
The door opened. ‘There’s a problem,’ DC Edward Ritter said, popping his head through the small gap.
‘Like I said, someone had better be dead.’
Ritter coughed as the cloud of smoke from Bishop’s cigarette hit the back of his throat.
‘Girl found in the woods this morning we thought was killed by a falling tree.’
‘Thought?’
‘Dr Nash reckons she was strangled.’
‘What?’
‘Dr Nash has found evidence that she was strangled. He’s abandoned the post-mortem. He says he wants someone from CID to attend. He also wants to know why it wasn’t noticed at the scene.’
Bishop thought for a moment. ‘Who was first attending?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Well, fucking find out!’ he shouted. He stood up and grabbed for his jacket hanging on the back of his chair. ‘Get a car. You can drive me to the hospital. And whoever missed this, I want them sitting in this chair when I get back,’ he said, pointing to the empty seat opposite his desk.
The argument between Dr Paul Nash and DI Henry Bishop could be heard throughout the building.
Bishop, in his usual bully-boy tactics, stormed into the post-mortem suite and criticised Nash’s staff for washing the body and destroying any evidence they may have been able to get from the victim.
Nash, in return, criticised Bishop and his team for not properly investigating the scene.
Nash pushed Bishop into the exhibits room and closed the door behind them for a little privacy.
‘She was found with a downed tree on her fucking back. What would you have thought?’ Bishop shouted.
‘A lone, young female found dead in woodland should have set alarm bells ringing. I mean, Jesus Christ, it’s not that long since the Yorkshire Ripper was front-page news. Haven’t you lot learned anything from the way that was handled?’
‘Different force,’ Bishop said, looking away.
‘Oh. So, everything runs perfectly smoothly and by the book in North East Police, does it?’
‘We did everything right.’
‘No, you didn’t, or you would have spotted the signs of strangulation straight away. She’s got two bloody big thumb prints on the back of her neck.’
‘Shit,’ Bishop spat through gritted teeth. ‘What else can you tell me?’
‘There’s evidence of a blunt force trauma to the back of the head. I can’t tell if it’s from someone hitting her or if it was from a falling branch. I’d normally say we’ll take a closer look, but she’s been washed.’
‘Fuck.’
‘Also, her knickers are missing and there’s evidence of recent sexual activity.’
‘She was raped?’
‘We won’t know until we’ve done the full PM, but I’m not doing anything until I have a police presence in that room to supervise.’
‘DC Ritter is scrubbing up now,’ Bishop said, falling into a seat. His face looked ashen. His eyes darted left and right, rapidly, as he thought. ‘You’ve got her clothes?’
‘Yes. They’re bagged up in the suite.’
‘I’ll have to send a team out to the woods, see if they can find anything useful.
Look, Dr Nash … Paul … my team is under a great deal of scrutiny at the moment, especially with the Douglas Broughton case going tits up last year.
If you could just not mention this in your report, that would be a big help to me,’ he said, his eyes wide with a slimy, placating smile on his face.
‘You’re asking me to write a false report?’
‘No. Just, you know, write your report in the usual way, but don’t mention that she was brought in as a simple accident. Just state that you did your PM and found evidence of rape and strangulation and we launched a murder inquiry.’
‘You’re asking me to lie?’
‘I’m asking you to help me out, Paul.’
‘Sorry. No can do.’
‘I’m not asking you to out and out lie, just, hold back on a few details.’
Nash folded his arms.
‘You bastard,’ Bishop seethed.
‘Before you carry on, DI Bishop, I should inform you that we’re standing in the exhibits room which has an open mic that can pick up everything said in here so conversations can be relayed to the post-mortem suite, and that every single member of my staff, and including your DC Ritter, have heard every word you’ve just said. ’
Bishop turned and looked out of the window at the masked faces glaring back at him.
He didn’t say anything. There was nothing he could say. He stormed past Dr Nash, shouldering him hard in the process, and headed for the exit.
DI Bishop pulled up in his Astra as close to the site where Alice Patterson was found dead as possible. A marked police car was already there with two PCs inside. Bishop climbed out of the car, slammed the door behind him and lit up a cigarette.
‘Were you first on the scene?’ he asked.
‘No, sir. We arrived just afterwards. We both stood on the cordon and told people they couldn’t go in. It’s busy with joggers and dog walkers in the early morning.’
‘Show me,’ Bishop said.
The two PCs walked through the woods. Bishop struggled over the sodden ground in his sensible shoes and had to hold onto nearby trees to stop himself from falling. Ahead, the two uniformed officers stopped to allow him to catch up.
‘Go on, for fuck’s sake,’ Bishop instructed. He didn’t want them seeing him slipping and making him the laughing-stock of the station.
‘She was found here, sir.’
Bishop joined them and looked around. They were deep into the woods but could still hear the sound of traffic from the nearby road.
‘Exactly here?’ He pointed.
‘Yes. She was lying on her front, head pointing in that direction.’
‘I’m assuming this was the branch covering her?’ Bishop pointed to a thick, heavy branch at the base of a mighty oak tree.
‘Yes. It took three of us to lift it off her. I was called in to help.’
Bishop looked up and the two officers followed his gaze.
‘It doesn’t look like it’s come from this tree,’ Bishop said.
‘No. And there’s evidence of it being dragged, if you look closely.’
‘You are?’
‘PC Atkin, sir.’
‘Did you notice this before?’
‘No. I was on the cordon.’
‘You?’ Bishop looked to the other.
‘PC Bellamy. I didn’t notice. I helped lift the branch then went back to the side of the road, sir.’
‘I think the branch might have come from this tree, sir,’ Atkin said. He’d moved away from them and pointed up to a tall tree, roughly ten feet from where they were standing.
Bishop looked up at the tree, down at the ground where Alice’s body was found, then at the forest floor. There was faint evidence of something being dragged along the ground as leaves and twigs had been pushed out of the way, though the storm had covered up most of the tracks.
He walked along the makeshift path, kicking at the piles of leaves and debris as he went. He paused. Something had caught his eye. He turned back, pushed aside a few more leaves with his foot and bent down for a closer look. If he wasn’t mistaken, he was looking at a pair of torn knickers.
‘She was murdered, and it was made to look like an accident. And we fucking fell for it,’ Bishop said, more to himself than the uniformed officers.
‘Is there anything you need us to do, sir?’ Atkin asked Bishop as he strode past them back to his car.
‘Yes. Keep your fucking mouths shut about all this,’ he shouted over his shoulder.