The Oakhurst Murders Duology

6-3

MITCHELL FOUND ZACK Wild and Melissa deep in conversation when he entered the interview room. He wasn’t happy with how friendly Melissa seemed to be with the man he was about to question, he said nothing, however, since he didn’t want to antagonise his witness and possible suspect.

“Sorry to have kept you waiting, Mr Wild,” he apologised. “I see Constable Turner got you a drink, is there anything else you need before we get started with this interview?”

“Thank you, no,” Zack said. “She makes a strong coffee, I’m going to be bouncing off the walls as it is, without having anything else. I’d rather just get on with the interview, I’m sure we all have stuff to get on with.”

“Fair enough, perhaps you can start by telling me how you came to find the body,” Mitchell said.

“Sure. I was out for a run, saw something on the opposite bank, called it in, then waited for you guys to arrive,” Zack said succinctly.

Mitchell stared at the man on the other side of the table for several long moments, not quite able to believe that that was all he seemed to want to say. “Can you expand on that for me?” he asked. “For instance, why were you out for a run? Is it something you do regularly, or a one-off?”

“Regularly,” Zack answered. “I go running most mornings, it’s a good way to keep myself in shape.”

“Do you run the same route every morning?”

Zack shrugged. “More or less. I try to do about five miles every day, keeping to the same route helps me know how far I’ve gone, and gives me some idea of whether I’m keeping to a regular pace.”

“Five miles?” Melissa blurted. “You must be really fit if you do five miles a day.” The moment the words escaped her she found herself blushing, she sounded like a schoolgirl with a crush.

A smile played about the corners of Zack’s mouth. “I guess fit is a matter of perspective,” he said. “The older I get, the more exercise I have to do just to keep my weight stable. Working used to keep me pretty fit, but now I’m stuck at a computer all day, I’ve got to work that much harder not to go to flab.”

“If you run the same route every day,” Mitchell said, far from pleased with the way the interview was going. “How is it you didn’t see the body until this morning? I’m not an expert, but it looked to me as if the body – he found it easier to think of the body as simply that, rather than as a former person – had been there for a couple of days at least. Surely you should have seen it before now.”

“I said more or less,” Zack pointed out. “Usually I follow the road through the village and out towards town; it’s nice, straightforward, and it’s easy for me to know how far I’ve gone. The downside, though, is it’s boring,” he said with an exaggerated roll of his eyes. “Since the weather was so good this morning, compared to what it’s been this past week, I thought I’d take a different route on my run; I do that every now and then. A change is as good as a rest, as they say. I only got as far as the pub before I decided not to bother with my usual route; I turned off the road, so I could head along the riverbank, and found the body after about a mile and a half, well, you saw where she was.”

Mitchell nodded. “If you left the road at the pub, how is it you saw the body?” he asked. “It was right at the edge of the trees, not easy to see from the East bank, especially with the grass about a foot tall, as it is there.”

“I couldn’t see it clearly,” Zack admitted. “I caught a glimpse of something in the grass, that was all; unfortunately, I’ve had enough experience of dead bodies to be pretty sure of what I was seeing, even if I couldn’t see it clearly. I didn’t want to call you guys, and lady,” he said with a nod towards Melissa Turner, “out there until I was positive, though, so I waded across to make sure my eyes weren’t deceiving me. I wish they had been. I thought I left all that sort of thing behind when I left the force.”

“Have you seen many bodies?” Melissa asked, curiosity getting the better of her desire not to annoy her superior.

“Too many,” Zack said. “Of course, one is too many, as I’m sure you’ll agree.”

Melissa nodded. “I hope you’re wrong about the body you found just being the first,” she said. “Because I don’t think I could ever get used to what I saw this morning.”

“You never really get used to it,” Zack told her. “At least most people don’t. You sort of become inured to it, so you can keep going and do your job. It’s when you become used to it, if you ever do, that you have to start thinking about whether it’s time for you to stop and find something else to do.”

“Is that why you stopped being a detective?” Melissa asked, realising too late that it might sound rude.

“If you don’t mind,” Mitchell said irritably. “What did you do after you were sure you had found a body?” he asked of Zack Wild.

“I called the police station to report it, then I went up to the bend in the river to wait for you guys to get there.”

“You didn’t check to see if she was alive or anything?” Mitchell asked. “Constable Pritchard said that when you called the station you said she was dead; did you check to be certain?”

Zack shook his head. “There was no need. I knew she was dead as soon as I saw her. It would have been a waste of time to check, and doing so would have put any evidence there might be at risk. My old boss would crucify me if I did something like that, being retired is no excuse.”

Mitchell spent a few moments absorbing that before he posed his next question. “If you didn’t get close enough to risk any evidence, why did you insist on your trainers being bagged up for the forensics team? Surely they won’t find any trace of you on or around the body.”

“No, they won’t,” Zack said confidently. “But if the forensics guys are at all thorough, they’ll check the ground for some distance around the body for evidence, and take casts of every shoe print they find; once they’ve done that they’ll want prints from the footwear all three of us were wearing this morning, so they can eliminate us from whatever they find.” It had been some time since he last had to explain forensics procedures to anyone. “If they want to be really thorough, they’ll even take our DNA and fingerprints.”

“Had you ever seen the girl before this morning?” Mitchell asked, not at all happy to be having his job explained to him.

“That’s hard to say,” Zack told him. “Given how unrecognisable she was, I could have seen her every day and I wouldn’t know it. Do you have any idea who she is?”

“We have reason to believe her name is Georgina Ryder, she’s been missing for a week.”

“The name’s familiar; I heard around the village she was missing, but since I didn’t have a face to put to the name, it meant nothing to me,” Zack said.

“So, you can tell us nothing about her disappearance and murder?”

“Sorry, no,” Zack answered, doing his best to ignore the accusatory note in the sergeant’s voice.