THROUGH THE GLASS DARKLY - OLD SINS CAST LONG SHADOWS

THROUGH THE GLASS DARKLY - EPISODE SIX

CHAPTER

TEN

Fears and beginnings.  They began as tiny ceaseless tremors inside me, a buzzing blade that gnawed at the soft wet tissue opening great cavities that was still not large enough for my lungs to expand.

            Coincidences and small occurrences have kept adding themselves to the case, complicating the picture instead of making it clearer.  The blackmail.  The dates.  The photographs.  A man committing suicide by jumping from the fourth floor of his home, yet no windows were open or damaged.  A transgender relation from Melbourne turns up in the family crypt murdered.  Lady Mabbott bugging her daughter’s room.

            When we arrived at the manor, the sky was a purple-black, and it was freezing cold.  The grounds had two dozen officers wearing reflective vests and carrying torches, searching for more evidence and clues concerning the death of Wendy Clark.  The dog squad were due in the morning.  A helicopter swept above us, tethered by a beam of light to the ground.  The Suffolk Constabulary were now throwing their considerable weight behind the investigation.

            Not surprisingly, the remaining family members were still awake, gathered in the lounge. Cleo sat with her legs tucked under her, engrossed in an old film on the television.  Adam Mabbott was doing the cryptic crossword in the local newspaper and as for Lady Mabbott, she was sitting on the sofa scrolling at through her smartphone.

            “I’m sorry to disturb you all so late, Lady Mabbott,” DCI Shaw said as we stepped into the lounge.  “But I wondered whether we could have a word.”

            Lady Mabbott looked up from her phone.

            “Of course,” she said.

            Adam Mabbott lowered the paper slightly and looked over the top of it in our direction.  “What’s all this about?” he asked.

            “We need to speak to, Lady Mabbott.”  Shaw told him emphatically.

“Then, do you mind if I stick around?”  Adam said putting the newspaper down and moving to a more upright position in the armchair.

            “Not at all,” I said, quickly.  “I see you like crosswords like your brother.”

            Adam laughed.  “My brother couldn’t tell one crossword from another.”

I looked at him for a moment, before turning my attention back to Lady Mabbott.

            “Lady Mabbott, do you mind us speaking to you in front of your daughter and brother-in-law?”  I asked.

            Lady Mabbott looked at us as though the question was ridiculous.

            “No, of course not.”

            “Good,” I said. “Then can you tell me why you put a surveillance bug under your daughter’s bed?”

            Lady Mabbott hadn’t seen that question coming, and it was as though I had just slapped her face. 

            “What?”  She eventually managed to say.

            “The SIM card inside the bug is registered to your credit card.  And the bug was taped to the underside of Cleo’s bed.  So, QED, you have been bugging your daughter.  The only question to ask: why?”

            “I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about,” Lady Mabbott said, trying to buy time.

            “Don’t lie to us, Lady Mabbott!”  Shaw snapped, his face reddening with anger.

            “The telecoms company are sending over the original contract you took out for the SIM card,” I said.  “But we already know it has your name and address on it.  And your signature.”

            Lady Mabbott looked from us to her daughter and then her brother-in-law, confusion in her eyes.  But there was a moment, I saw, where she seemed to come to a decision.  I’d seen it often before.  Against her instincts, Lady Mabbott was about, to tell the truth.

            “Very well,” she said, drawing herself up straighter in her chair.  “Since you’re asking, I don’t deny it.  I placed that bug there.”

            “I see,” DCI Shaw said, trying to hide his surprise at Victoria’s resolve.  “And may we ask why you did that?”

            Lady Mabbott’s lip curled into a sneer as she said, “My daughter was having an affair with her uncle last Christmas, and it’s how I managed to catch them.”

            All the life seemed to drain out of Adam’s face as his sister-in-law, and I saw shame flood in his cheeks.

            “My daughter is like that,” Lady Mabbott said, “if she wants something, she just takes it.  Spoilt b***h!”

            I was surprised that Lady Mabbott would verbally, publicly, slaughter Cleo.  “And the thing is,” Lady Mabbott continued.  “I knew Adam was infatuated with her, but I thought Cleo with her parties and drugs would never go after him.  How wrong I was.”

            I looked across at her brother-in-law and saw his Adam’s apple bob as he swallowed. I almost felt sorry for the man.  Almost, of course, but not completely.  Having an affair with your niece while living in the same house, was definitely biting the hand that fed you.

            Shaw turned to Adam.  “Is this true?” he asked.

            Adam nodded meekly, ashamed.

            “Miss Mabbott?”

            She nodded her eyes red with tears.

            “What happened?”

            “I’ll tell you what happened,” Lady Mabbott cut in before her brother-in-law could answer.  “This harlot seduced my brother-in-law over Christmas.”

            “Adam?”  I asked.

            Adam looked at me like a little boy lost.  “It’s true.  Cleo and I had an affair last Christmas.”

            I looked at Adam.  He was hardly someone I would have imagined having a wild affair with a young woman, let alone a niece as beautiful as Cleo.  Balding, with big hands and a thick neck, his head shaped like a hard hat and glistening with sweat.  But then, there were no accounting for tastes.

            “So, this affair,” I said, “happened before your brother died.”

            “That’s right,” Adam said.  “Ours . . . Liaison only last a few days, and it stopped the moment Victoria confronted us with a recording of Cleo and me.”

            “A recording of you in Cleo’s bedroom?”  I offered.

            Adam nodded.

            “Can I ask about that?”  I said, turning to Lady Mabbott.  “I mean, I know that what your daughter and your brother-in-law did was wrong, but was it really necessary to put a surveillance bug in your daughter’s bedroom?”

            Lady Mabbott’s eyes narrowed.  “You haven’t got children, have you, Mr Handful?”

            I fidgeted from one foot to another.  “Actually, no.”

            “When you see your children making a mistake that you know is going to ruin their lives, you would do anything to stop them and try and guide them in the right direction.”

            “What happened when your sister-in-law confronted you?”  Shaw asked Adam.

            “We . . . Confessed to everything of course.”  Cleo interrupted, her voice shaking with emotion.

            “Only after I played you the recording!”  Her mother spat.

            “No, that’s not true, Mummy!”  She said.  “I denied it at first, I admit that much, but the moment I realized what was at stake, I told you everything.  You know that!”

            I looked at mother and daughter.

            “I’m curious,” I said.  “How does this surveillance bug work?  It looks rather basic.”

            “It’s simple,” Lady Mabbott said, unable to keep a note of pride out of her voice.  “When I knew my daughter and brother-in-law were sneaking off for their liaison, I would then ring into the device and record what was going on.”

            “Do you have the recordings?”

            This threw Lady Mabbott.

            “I’m sorry?” she asked.

            “If you’re the sort of person who bugs bedrooms, I’m sure you’re the sort of person who kept the recordings.”

            Lady Mabbott looked at me and seemed to be weighing up her options.

            “You’re right,” she eventually said.

            “Then would you get the recordings for us, please?” DCI Shaw asked as reasonably as if he was asking a neighbour if he could borrow a cup of sugar.

            Lady Mabbott knew she had no choice. She stood up and went upstairs.

            I noticed that, with Lady Mabbott gone, Cleo and Adam Mabbott became more closed-off, even more introverted.

            “Are you okay?”  I asked them.

            “I’m not a harlot,” Cleo said, now that her mother had gone.

            “No, she’s not,” Adam reiterated.  “Cleo can be a bit wild sometimes, but she doesn’t have a bad bone in her body.  She is a good person you have to believe that.”

            “How did the affair start between you two?”  I asked.

            “I don’t know,” he said.  “It was around about Christmas.  The house was full of cousins and friends.  All with their partners and children and Cleo was all on her own.  So, I tried to talk to her, motivated by my desire to do the favourite uncle thing.  But I soon realized . . . Well, my interest in her wasn’t . . .” Adam struggled to find the right word.  “Pure,” he eventually conceded.  “But Cleo also seemed interested in me.  That’s what I couldn’t understand.  And, I don’t know how it happened, but we were suddenly in bed with her.  I felt so ashamed afterwards. I had made love to my niece. But, the next day. I went to her room again to call it all off, but this time she was waiting for me.  We both knew why I was there.  It was like a dream, those few days, but that is the problem with dreams, you eventually, wake up.”

            Before Adam could say any more, Lady Mabbott returned with a USB drive which she handed to DCI Shaw.

            “The recordings are on this,” she said.

            “Thank you.  And don’t worry, we’ll return it to you once we’ve copied it.”

            “No need,” Lady Mabbott said.  “You were right.  I already have copies of the sound files.”

            “Tell me, Lady Mabbott,” Shaw said.  “After you daughter and brother-in-law finished their affair, did you tell your husband?”

            “Are you mad?”  Lady Mabbott snorted.  “Do you think they’d still be here if I had done?  Greg would have disowned them and kicked them out on the same day.  The fact that we’re all still here living in perfect harmony should prove to you that whatever issues we may have had between us has finally been resolved.”

            Turned towards Cleo.  “This boyfriend you were with when your father died, was that your uncle?”

            Cleo shook her head.  “There wasn’t a boyfriend.  I was on my own, consoling myself that I couldn’t be with the man that I loved.”

            “Any issues this family has is kept between these four walls.” 

            As Lady Mabbott said this, she crossed her arms as though to say that that was all there was to say on the matter.  And, on reflection, I couldn’t help but conclude that she was right.

CHAPTER

ELEVEN

Back at the police station, DCI Shaw got the sound files from the thumb drive and copied them onto his main computer.  Turning the volume up as loud as possible, he played the first file.

            Almost at once we heard voices speaking from the computer’s speakers.  The sound was muffled, but it was possible to hear a man – it sounded like Adam – saying “We can’t do this.”  A woman then replied, “But that’s why we have to do this!”

            We stood in silence as we heard Cleo flirting beg Adam to come to bed with her – goading him on, saying she wanted him, she needed him, and that he was irresistible. Next, we heard Adam beg Cleo to put her top back on, that he was her uncle, and that it would destroy her father.  Cleo just laughed, telling Adam that her father was only worried about Wendy Clark, more than her poor naïve mother.  And then, with a “Dear God, Cleo!” there was the sudden sound of bed springs stretching violently – I could only but presume because Adam’s resistance had finally crumbled, and he and Cleo had fallen onto the bed together.

            Finally, as the talking was completely obliterated by the steady groan of bedsprings rhythmically bouncing, Cleo and Adam were clearly on the bed now.          And it was only then that I realized that I was standing next to DCI Shaw while we both listened to an audio recording of two people having s*x.

            “Chief?!”

            Shaw whipped his head around and saw DS Grave holding a desk phone in his hand.

            “It’s the pathologist.”

            The sound of the rhythmic bouncing filled the room.  “Somebody turned that off!” he said, as he dived for the mouse on the computer and desperately started clicking at the sound file until he’d managed to silence it.

            He then walked over to the Detective Sergeant and took the receiver off him.

            “Hello?”

            He listened intently.

            “Very well, we’ll be over.”

            He replaced the receiver and turned towards me.

            “Come on, John,” he said.  “Dr Laurie wants to see us.”

            It was an easy twenty-minute drive through the snow.  Oxmarket was one of those sleepy English seaside towns that seem to burst into life for a few months every summer and then hibernate for the rest of the year.  Quaint.  Historic. Swept clean.  The locals clung to their traditions and complain about the rich interlopers who blew in from London and buy the best houses with the best views.  These outsiders arrive at weekends in their Range Rovers and four-wheel-drive BMWs, bringing children, dogs, quinoa, rocket, coffee machines and bottles of Tanqueray.

            When Zoë was alive, we visited Oxmarket for a bank holiday weekend.  We stayed in a lovely Victorian hotel with creaking stairs and gloomy hallways and baths with clawed feet.  It overlooked the town’s historic pier, which jutted ornately into an estuary. I remembered long walks and buying ice cream cones at a kiosk on the promenade, which had historic photographs of the bathing and bathing huts.  The tourists still came in the summer, but only the young, the old and the brave seem to swim any more.

            Everywhere was locked up for winter and in the headlights of the Land Rover glittering snowflakes fell soundlessly, taking their time before they reached their destined places of rest, enveloping everything in a calm, silent coldness that was comforting in its own distinct way.

            We stopped at some traffic lights.  The only car on the road.  I sensed DCI Shaw glance in my direction.

            “Are you a gambling man, John?”

            “No.”

            “But you understand odds?”

            “Yes.”

            “A true punter might wager a few quid on a long shot just to keep an interest in a race, but he doesn’t bet his house on an outsider without inside information, you understand what I’m saying?”

            The answer was no, but I didn’t interrupt him.

            “A punter doesn’t risk his entire stake unless he gets a nod from someone close to the horse, the jockey or the trainer.”

            “What does this have to do with me?”

            The traffic lights turned green, and we moved off slowly, tyres crunching on the freezing road.

            “You’re a long shot.”

            “Am I?”

            “Assistant Chief Constable Angela White spoke very highly of you.  And I’m led to believe she doesn’t say pleasant things about people outside the force as a rule.”

            We stopped at another set of traffic lights.

            “Hell, of a mess, this . . .”

            I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to answer.

            “We need to tread gently.  Under normal circumstances, a man falling from a window and the discovery of a rotting corpse would not create too many issues, but this is vastly different.  This is the Mabbott family.”

            “Issues?”

            “Yes.  I desperately need you to step up to the plate with this one, John.  Help us understand what has happened.”

            We pulled away, wheels spinning slightly, as we moved forward.  “The press is going to have a field day.  That is why we’re not making it public just yet.  Ordered a full media blackout.  I don’t know how long it’s going to hold . . .”

            “What about the servants at the manor?”

            “We’ll seek their co-operation.”

            The silence stretched out.

            “Question, John.  Is there anyone you suspect as being the killer?”

            “Yes.”

            “Would you like to share that information with me?”

            “Not yet.  Not until I’m certain.”

            “You’re not holding out on me, are you John?”

            “No,” I said.  “I just want to be sure.”

            “Fair enough,” he said.  “But make sure I’m the first to know whom you think done it.”

            “You have my word, Detective Chief Inspector.”

            “As long as we understand each other,” he said, turning the Land Rover into the road that led to the mortuary.

            The mortuary was in a different part of Oxmarket, but I knew my way there from earlier trips. It was built like a bunker and had twelve pathologists doing fifteen hundred post-mortems a year. I knew this fact because of the chart on the office wall.

            The man on the mortuary reception was so huge he made the desk look like a child’s toy.  He was quilted with so much flesh that he seemed virtually boneless, the strap of his watch digging into the dimpled wrist like cheese wire into a dough.  His breath came in a faintly adenoidal wheeze as we explained who we were.

            “Sweet five.  Through the door and down the corridor.”  His voice was incongruously high-pitched for such a big frame.  He gave us a cherubic smile as he handed us a couple electronic pass cards.  “You can’t miss it.”

            We swiped the cards on the door and went into the mortuary itself.  We walked along a brightly lit corridor that reeked of floor polish, disinfectant and a strange mixture of stomach acid, gall, and faeces.  Despite visiting the mortuary on many occasions during my time as a private detective and I never got used to the smell.

Dr Debbie Laurie was in the tiled autopsy suite, dressed in surgical scrubs and a rubber apron. A portable CD player stood on a bench nearby, quietly playing a rhythmic orchestra track I did not recognize.  Another similarly dressed woman was with her, hosing down the body that lay on the aluminium table to sluice off the insects and blowfly larvae.

            “Thanks for coming down so quickly,” Debbie said brightly as the door swung shut behind us.  Most men did not pay attention to her beauty, but her colour. Burnt sienna never looked so beautiful on a woman. With black hair of wool and her head held high, she waltzed on with an effortless saunter. The clicking of her heels added rhythm to the soft classical music that played onward without pause. When her eyes met mine, she smiled.   She gestured to the younger woman who was still hosing down the body.  “John, DCI Shaw, this is Lizzie Durrant, one of my morgue assistants.”

            Lizzie Durrant could have graced any billboard or magazine cover, but she was better than those two-dimensional photoshopped models. Somehow her imperfections made her perfect. There was a shyness to her, hesitation in her body movements and a softness in her voice. Her mortuary outfit was bold against her dark skin. She was right there, only feet away, but in her understated glamour, she might as well be on the television or a girl in a music video.

            “Hi,” she said, raising a gloved hand.

            “Scrubs and the rest are in the locker room down the corridor,” Debbie said.

            We had the changing room to ourselves.  Putting our clothes in a locker, we pulled on surgical scrubs and a rubber apron.  What we were about to see was the grimmest part of a pathologist work, and certainly, one of the messiest.  DNA tests can take up to eight weeks, and fingerprints only supplied an identity match if the victims were already on record.  But even with badly decomposed bodies such as this, the victim’s identity and sometimes also the cause of death itself.  Before that could be done, though, every trace of soft tissue had to be removed.

            Even though we knew the identity of the victim I knew this wasn’t going to be a pleasant job.

            When we went back to the autopsy suite we paused outside.  We could hear Debbie humming along to the music over the sound of running water.

            Shaw opened the door and we went in.  Lizzie had finished hosing down the body.  Dripping water, the dead woman’s body glistened as though she had been varnished.

            Debbie was at a trolley of surgical instruments.  She picked up a pair of tissue scissors and pulled the bright overhead light closer as we went over.

            “I hear Kira’s back in town,” she said to me as I stepped back.

            “Yes,” I said, non-committally.

            Debbie looked in my direction.  “You don’t look pleased about it?”

            “I’ve hardly seen her since she arrived.”

            “OK, while I do this, I will tell you why I called you over here.”

            “Please,” Shaw said with a hint of sarcasm.

            “The mutilation happened post-mortem.”

            “What?”  DCI Shaw was visibly shocked.

            “Did she die of a blood choke?”

            Debbie looked up at me raising a quizzical eyebrow.  “How did you know?”

            “Just a shot in the dark.”

            “How much do you know about them?”  She asked.

            “Know the effect.”  I knew more than that, but I didn’t think this was the time and place to discuss my less than illustrious career with MI5.

            “I don’t,” DCI Shaw admitted.

            “Force is applied to both sides of the neck, constricting the carotid artery, decreasing blood flow to the brain.  A short compression is harmless, but if you deprive the brain of blood for four minutes, we are talking brain damage.  In six minutes, you’re dead.”

            “In this case?”

            Debbie shrugged.  “The killer didn’t let her go.” 

            “What did the killer use to mutilate her?”

            “Best guess – a box-cutter with a retractable blade.  Cut her skin to the bone.”

            “Did you do the autopsy on Greg Mabbott?” 

            She nodded.

            “Was that a blood choke?” 

            She looked at me, recognizing where I was going with my line of questioning.

            “Greg Mabbott showed limited evidence of neck trauma.”

            “What do you mean by limited evidence?”

            Debbie started thinking out loud now.  “He had some minor perimortem bruising on his jaw, which could have been caused by the small St Christopher he wore around his neck . . . If it was pressed hard into his skin.”

            “By a forearm choking him?”

            “Possibly,” she said.  “But don’t forget he fell from a quite considerable height and all other injuries would have been lost with the impact trauma from the fall.”

            “Anything else?”  DCI Shaw asked. 

            “Sodium hydroxide – your basic household cleaner.  The killer tried to destroy their DNA.  We managed to get one sample, but it’s highly degraded.”  She paused.  “And then there’s this.” She directed us towards Wendy’s groin area where we could see her v****a shown in all its anatomical detail.  Then I recognize what I’m looking at . . . What I’m not seeing.  Her prepuce and c******s were missing.

            “Tell me, John, what do you think the killer’s motive was? Power, jealousy, or s****l gratification?”

            “Taking control of an out of control situation, perhaps,” I replied.

            “You don’t sound very sure, John,” she said.  “That’s not like you?”

            “That’s because someone is laying a false trail, trying to complicate or obfuscate or muddy the water,” I said.  “I’ve no way of knowing what happened unless I learn more about Wendy Clark.  To explore her life, discovering her likes and dislikes, fears, and dreams.  Was she a risk-taker?  Did she draw attention to herself?  Make enemies?  Attract admirers?  By understanding her I will learn more about her killer.  I will see the world through the killer’s eyes and then hold up a mirror to the killer’s face.”

            The pathologist shook her head.  “That’s the difference between you and me – you want to know your subjects. I prefer them dead.”

            “One more thing,” I said. “Any sign of s*x reassignment surgery?”             

Debbie looked at me baffled.  “Pardon?”

            “s*x reassignment surgery,” I repeated.  “Wendy Clark was transgender.”

            “I don’t know where you get your information from, John” Debbie said, mockingly, “but this woman has had children.”