Snakes and Ladders

Chapter 4

4

Jack stepped out of his car and onto the gravel surface of one of the car parks at Mildenheath Woods. It was a chilly morning, although it was meant to warm up later. Then again, the forecasts had been saying that for more than a week, and it hadn’t turned out to be right yet.

A uniformed officer greeted him and led him into the woods towards the site where the body had been discovered, although Jack could’ve quite easily worked it out for himself by heading towards the sound of voices and the bright lights of the assembling scenes of crime team. When he got there, he noticed Dr Janet Grey, the pathologist, had already arrived. Although Dr Grey served a much wider area than just Mildenheath, the fact that she lived locally meant she was often on the scene quickly — and occasionally even before the senior investigating officer had arrived.

‘You’re even earlier than I expected, Jack,’ she said, smiling.

‘Yeah, I was out dogging in the other car park.’

Although gallows humour was a staple part of policing at the best of times, Jack had always enjoyed a good relationship with Dr Grey, and secretly quite enjoyed their comments towards each other. In reality, Mildenheath Woods was closer to Jack’s house than the police station was, so it had been merely fortunate that he’d not yet left for work when the call had come in.

The officers on the scene had created an outer cordon around the perimeter of the woods itself, with the inner cordon being much smaller. Jack kept his distance, although he was still more than able to see the scene in front of him.

The body lay on its side in the mud and dirt. Although the victim was heavily covered in blood and soil, it was still clearly identifiable as a young male.

‘Are his hands tied behind his back?’ Jack asked, looking more closely.

‘Cable-tied,’ Dr Grey replied. ‘Pretty tight, too. Whoever did it certainly didn’t want him getting out of it. There are one or two other oddities, too. Obviously the whole body’s pretty dirty from being buried in a shallow grave, but the knees are particularly muddy and damp. The dirt looks pretty ingrained in the trousers there, too, rather than having just been thrown loosely on top. That leads me towards thinking he might’ve been pushed to his knees at some point, or at least certainly knelt down heavily of his own accord.

‘Christ. Looks like a mafia-style assassination.’

Dr Grey shrugged. ‘Not for me to decide. I can only give you the facts. But if I was in your shoes, I imagine I’d probably be thinking much along the same lines.’

‘Definitely murder?’ Jack asked.

Dr Grey smiled and wagged her finger. ‘You won’t catch me out that easily. All these years and you still try to box me into a corner. It’s the detective in you, Jack.’

‘If you were in my shoes, then?’

‘I wouldn’t be. With the number of pine trees in here, the mud’ll be pretty acidic. I wouldn’t want to be walking through here in shoes as cheap as those.’

‘These are Hush Puppies,’ Jack said, looking affronted.

‘I know. But to answer your question as it was intended, all I can do is point you toward the facts. Our mutual friend was likely on his knees in the mud for some time, hands bound behind his back with cable ties, heavily beaten, considering some of the early bruising here. Judging by the amount of blood and the deep neck wounds, I imagine the slitting of his throat is what caused his death. I mean, I don’t think it’s beyond the bounds of my responsibilities to assume he probably didn’t do that to himself. Not with his hands in that position, anyway. Oh, and there’s some residue on his left cheek and upper lip, which looks like a sort of glue. It looks like some of his facial hairs — not that there are many — have been ripped out at the root. If I was a betting woman, I’d say there was probably some fairly hefty tape over his mouth at one point, which was subsequently torn off and discarded.’

Jack thought about this for a few moments. It seemed quite clear to him this was likely to be premeditated murder. For someone to have prepared tape and cable ties, lured or brought their victim out into the woods and then beaten him to his death required a certain degree of planning and foresight. Although the ramifications of that were much bigger from a criminal standpoint, it often made investigations much easier. For someone to go to that extent of planning, and to inflict that level of damage required them to really want the victim dead. Those sorts of nemeses tended to be quite easily identifiable once the victim’s life was explored and uncovered. In many ways, the scarier cases were ones where the victim encountered a malevolent stranger on the way home, or got into an argument with a random person outside a bar. Fortunately, though, stranger murders were rare, and it seemed to Jack as though this case was likely to be one where the killer was known to the victim. ‘Any ID on our man?’ Jack asked.

‘None whatsoever. No phone, no wallet, nothing.’

Jack nodded slowly as he considered that perhaps this investigation wouldn’t go quite as smoothly as he’d anticipated.