Bridge to Burn Read online

  Carys broke off as the door swung open and Barnes strode towards them, loosening his tie.

  ‘Right, Tutankhamun’s off to the morgue and there’s a uniform patrol staying at the premises until Harriet’s team release the crime scene,’ he said. ‘What have I missed?’

  Kay handed Carys’s notes to him, then turned to Gavin. ‘Can you get onto the council and find out if there were any issues during the renovation works? Complaints, problems with permits, anything like that.’

  ‘Will do, guv.’ He held up his mobile. ‘I’ll download the photos I took of our victim and the crime scene too, and get those in the system. Do you want a couple of printouts for the board?’

  ‘Please. Might as well show everyone here what we’re up against when it comes to identifying this one. I can’t imagine we’ll get anything through from Harriet’s team until some time tomorrow, not if they’re still there.’

  Gavin shot off towards his desk and Barnes handed the folder to Carys.

  ‘What are your initial thoughts?’ said Kay.

  ‘Well, he obviously pissed off someone,’ said Barnes. ‘Given the way his skull was broken.’

  Carys frowned. ‘We haven’t had any reports of trouble during the redevelopment works around here. I presume there’s no way he could’ve tripped and fallen into the cavity by accident and banged his head, then?’

  ‘No – we took a look upstairs before we left, and he was definitely hidden on purpose,’ said Kay. ‘There are all sorts of joists and wiring underneath the mezzanine level. All that would’ve had to have been moved to one side for him to fit.’

  She pushed herself out of her chair. ‘Come on – round up everyone and let’s have a quick run through what we need to do before the end of today. I need to brief Sharp before he leaves for the press conference in an hour.’

  Her stomach rumbled as she reached across for her mobile phone, and Carys rolled her eyes.

  ‘Not a word. I’ll eat later,’ said Kay.

  She moved to the front of the room and waited while her colleagues wheeled chairs across to where she stood next to a whiteboard while Gavin hurried over from the printer.

  ‘Got the photos,’ he said, and began to pin up two he’d chosen from those he’d taken.

  Kay cleared her throat. ‘Settle down, everyone. Let’s get on with it.’

  A few stragglers hurried to lean against desks or perched on the windowsills, and then she began.

  ‘For those of you who have joined us for the first time today, you’ll find we’re a close-knit team who like to get things done. Having said that, none of us bites so don’t be afraid to ask a question. You might be the one who sets us off in the right direction to get a result, all right?’ She smiled as a couple of young constables visibly relaxed and others gave Barnes and the other detectives a knowing nod, before she turned and rapped her knuckles on the first photograph. ‘We have a mummified body that was discovered when it fell through a ceiling in the old bank up on the High Street earlier this morning. No-one was injured, but as you can imagine it was a shock to everyone present.’

  A murmur filled the room as the investigative team leaned as one towards the photographs with their notebooks out and pens poised.

  ‘No-one knows who he is at the moment,’ said Kay. ‘He was dressed in denim jeans, a dark blue cotton shirt and canvas shoes. The labels in his clothing are common high street and online brands. He wasn’t wearing a watch, and there are no other forms of identification such as a wallet or driving licence. He’s estimated to be five foot eight – we’ll have that clarified after the post mortem because the mummification has caused a degree of shrinkage. His hair is on the long side, as you can see – and for the newcomers, our pathologist clarified it was about that length when he died. Don’t believe everything you read in the press about hair growing after death. He wasn’t in that cavity long enough, for a start.’

  She moved to the second photograph Gavin had provided. ‘When we’re done, I want you all to have a closer look at his fingertips – Lucas will try to extract prints for us, but they seem worn on his left hand, not so much on the other, which would be unusual for anyone associated with construction work.’

  ‘Maybe he was a guitar player,’ said a middle-aged constable from the back of the room.

  ‘Could be,’ said Kay. She wrote the suggestion on the board with a question mark under it, then re-capped the pen. ‘Parker – can you work with Carys and get the findings she’s pulled together to date into HOLMES before tomorrow morning so everyone can access it easily?’

  ‘Yes, guv.’ Phillip gave her a thumbs up. ‘I’ve got another couple of computers being installed as well – Theresa in admin managed to rustle them up from somewhere.’

  ‘Good work, thank you.’ Kay moved to an enlarged map of the immediate area around the software company’s offices. ‘Uniform have been working their way around the companies based on the three streets that surround our crime scene, and Andy Grey over at the digital forensics unit has been given copies of the security camera feed from two of the retail shops across the road from the software company. We can’t expect much from those to help us given the amount of time that’s passed since the renovations were completed, but it’s worth a shot.

  ‘CCTV – Barnes, can you coordinate with Hughes and get footage from at least the beginning of June onwards?’ Kay added. ‘Lucas said our victim dried out very quickly, so we’ll work on the basis that he was killed during the heatwave this summer. Let’s have a look to see if there was any suspicious activity around the site while works were ongoing, and then the two months afterwards while the premises were empty.’

  ‘Will do.’

  ‘Is it definitely a murder, guv?’ said Parker.

  ‘Given the size of the blow to his skull and the angle at which he was struck, we should assume our victim was murdered rather than it being an accident until we have the results from the post mortem. Regardless of how he died, he didn’t fall into that cavity. He had help to get in there,’ said Kay. She exhaled, dropped the pen to the desk next to her, then cast her eyes over the anxious faces that peered at the whiteboard.

  ‘So, let’s find out what happened to him, shall we?’

  Five

  Late the following afternoon Kay elbowed open the door, swearing under her breath as hot coffee slopped out of the takeout cup and over her hand.

  She flicked the worst of the liquid away and hurried towards her desk, the noise levels in the open plan space competing with the racket in the street outside from congested traffic and an ambulance fighting to make its way through two lanes of nose-to-tail vehicles.

  She’d spent the last four hours at headquarters, first with DCI Sharp bringing the chief superintendent up to date with the start of the investigation and providing an outline of how she planned to manage it before heading back to the town centre station, and then liaising with the media relations team to discuss how to cope with the barrage of enquiries from press and public alike following the previous night’s televised media conference.

  The sun had long disappeared over the horizon by the time she’d finished and hurried into the incident room to try and catch up with her team before they went home for the night.

  She placed the cup on her desk, eyed the flashing light on her desk phone with a glare, then emitted a sigh and began to attack the emails that had multiplied in the hours she’d been at headquarters.

  Barnes glanced up from his notebook and raised his eyebrow, his mobile phone to his ear.

  Kay shook her head and forced a smile.

  The whole day had left her disquieted.

  Around her, officers and detectives worked with the frantic buzz that only a new murder investigation could cause, and here she was having to fight her corner with senior management to ensure her team got the resources they needed to deliver the right result.

  ‘Everything all right?’ said Barnes, ending his call and tossing his phone onto his desk.

  ‘Yes,’
said Kay, and reached out for her computer mouse, wiggling it to waken the screen again. ‘The Chief Super seems happy with the way we’ve got ourselves set up here, at least.’

  Barnes leaned across, lowering his voice conspiratorially. ‘I’ve heard she plays the Times Sudoku—’

  ‘Nothing unusual about tha—’

  ‘With a pen.’

  Kay snatched up the soft stress ball Gavin had left on her desk and pitched it at Barnes, who ducked and then grinned at her.

  She laughed, grateful to him for lifting her mood a little. ‘Behave. Where are we up to with tasks? Have you managed to shed any light on the construction works over the summer?’

  ‘I’ll show you,’ said Barnes. He led the way across the room to where the whiteboard stood, now covered in various pinned notes and different coloured marker pen ink. He tapped a photograph of the building that had been taken prior to the redevelopment of the site. ‘So, this is what the place used to look like.’

  ‘I’d forgotten what an eyesore it was,’ said Kay.

  ‘Ripe for renovation, that’s for sure. The bank sold the site at auction – the last tenant left in November the previous year. It was purchased by Hillavon Developments, whose registered offices are in Rochester. The owner, Alexander Hill, lives in Broadstairs.’

  ‘Has anyone spoken to him?’ said Kay.

  ‘Gavin’s going to follow up later today. Apparently, the bloke plays golf until one o’clock on Tuesdays and keeps his phone switched off until the nineteenth hole. He hasn’t returned any of Gavin’s calls yet.’

  ‘Tell Gavin to let him know that we can always conduct the interview in one of our rooms here if he’s not going to take this matter seriously.’

  ‘Will do, guv.’

  ‘What do we know about him?’

  ‘Hillavon Developments – or Alexander Hill if you like – is an architect by trade, so he designed the new layout for the building and then contracted out the project management and construction to another company, Brancourt and Sons Limited.’

  ‘Where are they based?’ said Kay.

  ‘Here in Maidstone. Has been since the 1920s, according to their website,’ said Barnes. ‘I was planning on contacting them after we speak with the developer in case he tells us something we can question them about.’

  ‘Let’s get on with it and speak to someone at Brancourt and Sons as soon as possible. No doubt they’re expecting a phone call from us after last night’s news was broadcast, and the rumours will be spreading. I’d rather have as much information as possible so we can keep this investigation moving. Who’s running the family business these days?’

  ‘John Brancourt,’ said Barnes. ‘Lives over at Coxheath, and took over from his father thirty years ago. Seems to be a family tradition reading through the history on their website – the business is passed down to the first son in each generation before his thirtieth birthday.’

  ‘Right, get onto John Brancourt and arrange to interview him.’ She waited while her colleague made a note, and then continued. ‘Going back to the building, who were the last tenants before the place was sold? There was a boutique or something in the retail space below, wasn’t there?’

  ‘Yes, where the reception area is now.’ Barnes reached out to a neat pile of stapled documents on the table next to Kay and turned the pages, his brow creased until he found what he needed and jabbed the page with his forefinger. ‘Here you go. There was a fashion outlet below – Pia always reckoned it was too overpriced for Maidstone, which might have been why it closed a couple of months before the building was put up for sale. On the floor above that, there was a bloodstock licensing agency for racehorses. The top floor was used on a part-time basis by a graphic design company. Carys tracked down those tenants, and uniform will be out taking statements first thing tomorrow.’

  ‘Any issues before the place was sold?’ said Kay.

  ‘You mean tenants taking umbrage at being evicted?’ Barnes shook his head. ‘Not as far as we’re aware. Put it this way, there’s nothing on the system so unless the interviews that uniform do tomorrow shed any light on something, then no. No issues.’

  Kay crossed her arms over her chest as she assessed the information gathered in the first twenty-four hours. ‘I don’t like this one at all, Ian.’

  ‘Different, isn’t it?’

  ‘What on earth was he doing there in the first place? I mean, if there was an accident or something during the redevelopment works then we’d have heard about it. The Health and Safety Executive would have been crawling over that site within hours. You can’t cover up something like that, not these days.’

  Barnes scratched his chin. ‘We’re still working up a list of everyone who had access to the site once the renovations began.’

  ‘You’re doing a great job, Ian. It’s like Sharp always says, we don’t always get the breakthrough we need in the first twenty-four hours – despite what the training manuals tell us.’ She gestured across the photographs. ‘I mean, this is a good start.’

  ‘Guv, you don’t think Gavin has a point?’ said Barnes, lowering his voice.

  ‘About what?’ Kay peered across at him, and then frowned. ‘Oh, wait. The cats? For good luck?’

  ‘Well? What if someone did put him in that cavity on purpose?’ He shrugged and looked away, two spots of red appearing on his cheeks.

  ‘Look, let’s not rule it out. I think it’s unlikely we’re looking at a sacrificial killing but let’s face it – at the moment, we haven’t got anything else as a motive, have we?’ Kay turned to face the incident room, a mixture of officers in uniform or business suits creating a blur of activity. ‘How did the briefing go?’

  ‘Good. I think everyone knows what they need to do and are keen to get on with it. Parker’s finished getting HOLMES up to date so everyone else can start adding their notes as they go now and at least we’re able to print out the reports we need. Carys has added the information about the tenants she found as well as the formal data from Companies House, and Hughes has got two constables helping him go through the CCTV footage we’ve got to date.’

  Kay exhaled, letting out some of the frustration that had been starting to seep into her system during the sojourn at headquarters. ‘I knew I could count on you, Ian. Thanks. Get yourself home and hopefully we’ll make some headway tomorrow.’

  Six

  Kay gathered up the hessian tote bags from the back seat of her car, elbowed the door shut and crossed to the front door of her house, her ears still ringing from the screeching of a toddler at the supermarket checkout minutes before.

  The door opened before she could lower the shopping to fish out her keys.

  ‘Evening, detective.’

  She smiled. ‘Hey, you. Here – take some of these. They weigh a ton.’

  Her other half, Adam, obliged by taking two of the bags from her and chuckled as he opened the top of one of them. ‘I nearly phoned you to say we need more wine but I see you sorted that as a priority.’

  ‘Yes, I didn’t think you’d fancy white in this weather so I bought you a Rioja and a Pinot Noir,’ she said, shutting the door and dropping the security chain into place. ‘You choose.’

  A rich aroma teased her senses as she followed him into the kitchen, and then she saw what was on the centre worktop and froze.

  ‘Oh no.’

  A glass case took up one third of the wide surface, a plastic lid over the top of it peppered with ventilation holes and a thick layer of sawdust and shredded newspaper covering the floor of it.

  Adam turned from where he was unpacking the bags next to the refrigerator and raised an eyebrow. ‘What’s up?’

  Kay pointed at the glass case. ‘Please tell me the snake’s not back here.’

  Her veterinary husband laughed.

  Two years ago, he had brought home a sick snake whose owners were away on holiday. Having solved an investigation with her close-knit team to arrest and charge a vicious killer, she’d arrived home and discovered that the s
nake had escaped. Kay had perched on the kitchen worktop until Adam had finally located the reptile behind the washing machine after several minutes of panicked searching.

  ‘No, not a snake. Sid’s in fine fettle, you’ll be pleased to know.’ Adam scrunched up the empty bags and took the two Kay was holding before placing them on the worktop next to the case and beckoning to her to join him. ‘Come and have a look. I think you’ll like this.’

  She followed him across to the glass case. ‘It’s the old aquarium from out in the garage isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes. It’s all I had at short notice – that’s why I’ve used a seed tray as a lid. At least it’s got the holes already in it for ventilation, so that saved me a job.’

  Kay moved closer to the glass and peered inside.

  She noticed that Adam had added a piece of plastic guttering pipe, and had turned it upside down so that it formed a short tunnel at one end of the aquarium. A water bottle had been placed on the glass beside it and next to that, a second bowl of seeds and chopped up vegetables looked as if it had been recently ransacked.

  Movement from within the tunnel caught her eye, and then a nose and whiskers appeared moments before a sandy-coloured furry creature shuffled forwards and then rose shakily on its hind legs.

  ‘Aww, it’s a gerbil!’

  ‘Told you you’d like him.’

  ‘What’s his name?’

  ‘Cornflake.’

  ‘What? Seriously?’

  Adam shrugged. ‘His owner is eight years old.’

  Kay narrowed her eyes as she watched the rodent wobble across the sawdust towards the water bowl. ‘What’s wrong with him?’

  ‘He had a stroke over the weekend, poor thing,’ said Adam. ‘Unfortunately, it’s quite common amongst these. They make great pets but they don’t last much longer than three or four years.’

  ‘How old is Cornflake?’

  ‘Three and a half. Angela – that’s Cassie’s mum – is a bit squeamish when it comes to giving him his medicine so I offered to look after him for the next week or so. He’s making a good recovery so I’m sure he’ll be back home with her and Cassie before long.’