The Fourth Friend (DI Jackman & DS Evans #3)(56)

Silas was sitting on an empty oil drum, with his dog sprawled across his feet.

‘Evening, Silas. Alright?’

‘Good enough, young’un. You eaten?’

Carter considered the question.

‘Thought not. Come to the cottage, it won’t take more’n a few minutes. You can’t work with no fuel in your belly.’

Carter followed him through the long grass and reeds to the tumbledown cottage. Carter had eaten with Silas before. His meals might not pass current food safety standards but they were the most delicious he had ever tasted.

Now he sniffed the air. ‘Rabbit stew?’

‘Hare casserole. Get yourself a bowl.’

‘And you?’

‘I ate earlier. But you help yourself.’

The old man offered him a ladle and pointed towards an ancient stewpot bubbling away on the stove.

‘I used a bit of my homemade wine in it. Think it worked, too. Eh?’

‘I’ll say.’ Carter ate and ate. Being with Silas Breeze felt right, it always had. This old half-ruined cottage was his refuge from an unkind world.

He finished the bowl of food and sat back. He looked around. No Tom. Come to think of it, he never saw Tom when he was in Silas’s place. ‘I must get some work done, Si, but thank you for that. I appreciate it.’

‘I knows that.’ The old man grinned showing very few teeth. ‘You’ll work twice as ’ard now.’

Silas had been right. Carter worked until encroaching darkness made it impossible to do any more. All evening, Tom had been a silent presence.

He drove away, and the sound of her name followed him into the dark night.





CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Jackman arrived back from Greenborough just in time for the morning meeting. Marie met him in the corridor by the vending machine.

‘Coffee?’ She smiled, and in her eyes, he saw a spark of the old Marie.

‘I’d love one. Are the troops assembled?’ He nodded towards the CID room.

‘All present and correct, sir.’ She handed him a beaker of coffee. ‘Was your trip worthwhile?’

‘Edifying, Marie. Very.’

‘So is what our Max dug up in Scunthorpe.’

‘Then we’d better go and put our heads together.’

He confirmed that another person of interest had surfaced in the Danny Hurley investigation, and then concentrated on the Holland case.

‘Professor Wilkinson is conducting further forensic work at the Holland Cottage, and until he has completed his checks it will remain sealed up.’

Jackman took several large printouts and pinned them to the whiteboard. Diagrams of the crime scene.

‘These are stills from motion graphic software. You will see in the first diagram the general layout of the lounge, and here,’ he pointed to an enlarged photograph taken by the first team of SOCOs, ‘is the forensic photographers’ view of the room. It has an old-fashioned stone fireplace and an open fire. Note, the mantelpiece is very low compared to modern, or even Victorian designs.’ He pointed to the next picture. ‘Professor Wilkinson believes that Suzanne was standing in the centre of the hearthrug — here.’ The image showed a woman of Suzanne’s height and build. She was facing away from the fireplace.

‘How has he done all this?’ asked Carter.

‘Blood spatter and stain analysis.’

‘Clever stuff.’

‘He’s a brilliant scientist.’ Jackman gave a wry smile. ‘If a little off the wall.’

There was a ripple of laughter. Rory Wilkinson was universally liked in Saltern. His camp humour often defused the tension that followed after witnessing a traumatic crime scene.

‘I suggest you all come and look at these pictures when we are through here. It will give you a fairly good idea of what happened. In a nutshell, it went like this . . . Suzanne Holland was pushed with considerable force. She possibly caught her foot in the rug, tried to turn to steady herself, then hit her head against the corner of the mantelpiece. She then fell to the floor and cracked her temple on the iron surround. Prof Wilkinson says that there is no chance that she survived her injuries.’

‘How can he be so sure? And how did he know it was her temple?’ Marie was staring at the pictures.

‘I’ve just come from a twenty-minute tutorial on the mechanism and classification of spatter patterns. It included low, medium and high velocity of the blood depending on the force of impact. I have learnt that blood issues from the body in many different ways. It can drip, ooze, flow, gush and spurt, and they all leave different patterns. It was worth getting a migraine. I’m telling you, there is nothing that man does not know about blood at crime scenes.’

‘Heck, sir! I only asked.’

Jackman grinned, and then became serious again. ‘As for the temple, Prof Wilkinson said there was an arterial spurt that most likely came from one specific artery, the left external carotid. He made that deduction from a passive bloodstain that would have gathered beneath her body after her heart stopped beating.’ He exhaled loudly. ‘Of course, without her body we cannot be certain about everything, but the crime scene and the evidence found there will tell us more than enough.’

Charlie raised a hand. ‘So would it be classed as an accidental death, sir?’