The Corfe Castle Murders (Dorset Crime Book 1) Read online

“Don’t go inside,” she called. “We need to check if that tent’s up to the job.”

  The woman stopped in front of them, breathing heavily. Two men were behind her. They stopped and waited, eyes on the woman who Lesley assumed was their boss.

  The woman held out her hand, her eyes bright. “Gail Hansford, Crime Scene Manager. I don’t believe we’ve met.”

  She had that same soft burr, except in this case, it suited her. Lesley shook her hand. “Lesley Clarke. New DCI in the Major Crimes Team.”

  Gail’s eyes widened. “Then it’s our lucky day. I assume you’re SIO?”

  DS Frampton cleared his throat. Gail ignored him. Lesley decided she liked this woman.

  Sharon was near the trees, pacing and waving her phone around. Lesley had no idea when the next train to Birmingham was, or if there even was another train this afternoon.

  “To be honest, Gail,” she said, “I don’t start in the local force until tomorrow. So strictly speaking, I have no authority here.” She pointed towards the tent. “We’ve got a dead male, IC1, late thirties or forties, severe head trauma. I assume someone has called for the pathologist to attend.”

  “Called him on my way here,” said Frampton. “He wasn’t happy being dragged out on a Sunday afternoon.”

  “Well that’s what on-call is for,” said Lesley. She turned to Gail. “The scene will need securing. Forensics gathering. You know the drill.”

  “I do, Ma’am.”

  “The paramedics came in and out the same way you did. My daughter and I came via that path over there. I assume the witness did too, but we can check that tomorrow.”

  Gail nodded.

  “All of which means,” Lesley continued, “that we’ve got some localised areas where the place has been trampled up. You’ll need to—”

  “We’ll get footwear information from everyone who’s been through here,” Gail said. “We’ve already got prints and DNA for the attending police officers. Except yours, of course.”

  “I’ll get them sent down from West Midlands.” Lesley told her. “I believe I can leave the scene in your hands.”

  “You certainly can, Ma’am.” Gail smiled.

  DS Frampton grunted. Lesley turned to him. “Sergeant, you’re the ranking officer on the scene. Make sure it’s protected from ingress by the public. Liaise with FSM and Uniform for a search of the area.”

  “FSM?”

  “Forensic Scene... what do you call it?”

  “Crime Scene Management, Ma’am,” said Frampton.

  “CSI. Like the yanks. Just do the liaison, yes?”

  “Of course.” His voice was flat, his expression neutral.

  Lesley looked up at her daughter, who was wandering across the grassy mounds, her phone above her head. A forensics nightmare.

  “I’ll see you both in the morning,” Lesley said. “I’m assuming there won’t be much of interest from the pathologist, but let me know if there is.”

  “Of course,” Gail and Frampton said in unison. They exchanged frowns.

  Lesley chuckled. “Baptism of fire.” She trudged back the way she’d come, cursing the growing crowd of gawpers and hoping to hell there was another train to Birmingham today.

  Chapter Six

  Laila sat on a bench outside Dorset County Hospital, her arms pulled tightly around her. She’d been taken to A&E and had waited almost an hour to be seen. The paramedics had used some kind of electric blanket to warm her up in the ambulance and one of them had given her a cereal bar.

  By the time she’d arrived at the hospital she’d been fine, physically at least. Mentally, she was barely keeping herself from falling off a cliff edge.

  As long as she didn’t think about Archie’s body, she could cling on by her fingertips. Every time the memory crept into her head, she tried to push it out by picturing Archie as he had been on Friday night, before he’d left for his meeting.

  The two of them had left the confines of the cottage for the evening. He’d driven her to Swanage, where they’d eaten fish and chips on the pier. Neither of them ever had any money, despite Archie having a good job at Bristol University. Whenever she asked him about it, he clammed up.

  He’d been happy, teasing her about the purple streaks she’d dyed into her blonde hair. He’d been affectionate too, even discussing their future beyond the dig.

  He lived in Bristol when he wasn’t here. She lived – well, she lived nowhere, really.

  A green Citroen pulled up opposite and the horn blared: Crystal. Laila dragged herself off the bench and shuffled to the car, her limbs heavy. Crystal beckoned wildly: she was on double yellows and didn’t want to hang around. Laila slid into the passenger seat. Crystal drove off before she’d got her seatbelt on.

  “What the hell happened to you?” Crystal asked. “Why couldn’t they take you to the cottage hospital in Wareham? You’ll have to pay me for the petrol.”

  Laila clutched the door handle. Crystal sped out of the car park, taking a corner at a sharp angle and briefly mounting the kerb.

  Laila closed her eyes. It made the nausea worse. She opened them.

  “Thanks for picking me up.”

  “Hmm. So are you going to tell me what’s up?”

  Laila looked out at the damp evening. Dorchester was busy, tourist traffic clogging the roads. Street lights sped past, making her dizzy.

  “It’s Archie,” she said.

  “What about him?” Crystal jerked the wheel to one side and they skidded onto the A35.

  “I found him.”

  “What d’you mean, you found him?”

  Laila swallowed. The words were too big. “Have you been to the dig site today?”

  “No. It’s my day off.” Crystal gestured at the driver in front.

  Keep your hands on the wheel. “It’s been taken over by the police.”

  “What? Laila hen, you’re making no sense. Start again. Did Archie do something? Is he in trouble?”

  Laila swallowed the thick bile at the back of her mouth. “He’s dead.”

  Crystal jabbed the brake. “Shit.” She looked in the rear-view mirror. “Sorry!”

  A car overtook, horn receding into the dusk.

  Crystal turned to Laila. “Archie’s dead? When? Did his wi—?” She bit her lip. “Explain, Laila.”

  “I found him.” Laila tightened her grip on the door handle. “He was in one of the tents. He looked like... He looked like someone had attacked him.”

  “Murdered him?” Crystal stared at Laila. Laila pointed ahead. She should have waited till they got back to the cottage. Crystal was an erratic driver at the best of times.

  Crystal blinked at the road. “You’re saying someone killed Archie, and you found him. They took you to the hospital. Did this person attack you too?”

  “I had shock. That’s what they told me.” Laila thought of the blonde detective and her daughter. The daughter had been kind. She’d looked after her. Without her, Laila would have passed out at the scene.

  “So where is he now?” Crystal asked. “Archie?”

  “I don’t know. He was in the tent, the big one with the human remains.”

  Crystal grimaced. “More human remains now.” She glanced at Laila. “Sorry. They’ll have taken him somewhere. Post-mortem. What did he look like, when you found him?”

  “I... I’m not ready to...”

  “Course not. Sorry, love. But the police will want to talk to you. You found him. They might think you did it.”

  “Why would they think I did it?”

  “You were first on the scene. You were sleeping with him. And the two of you had that row.”

  “What row?”

  “Last Wednesday, remember? You wanted to go to London with him.”

  Laila wiped tears from her cheek. Her skin was slick with them. “That wasn’t a row.”

  Crystal put a hand on her knee. “It’s OK. They like to jump to conclusions. But they’ll know you could never do something like that.”

  “No.”
Laila was only nineteen. She was slight, although two months working on the dig had made her stronger than she’d believed she could be. “We made it up. He took me out, on Friday.”

  Crystal clutched her knee. “There you go. You’re fine, then.”

  They drove on in silence until they were past the Wareham bypass. It was getting dark.

  “Who would have wanted to kill Archie?” Laila asked.

  “Beats me. He was a good bloke. You sure he was murdered?”

  “He was... his head... He couldn’t have done that to himself. I mean, I don’t think so.”

  Had Archie been suicidal? He’d been cheerful on Friday night, the black mood after their argument had gone and been replaced by cheerfulness. On Saturday morning when she’d woken up, he’d already left. He’d never told her why he had to leave on Saturday when the meeting was on Monday.

  “Shush, love.” Crystal slowed the car as they drove up the hill past Corfe Castle. She turned onto The Square and along West Street. “I’ll get some of my best whisky out for you. You’ll need it, help you sleep. And I’ll tell Patrick what’s happened. You go to bed.”

  Bed. The empty bed, with Archie’s things in the cupboard on the other side. Laila thought of her encounter with Patrick. Had that only been this afternoon?

  She couldn’t face Patrick. He’d been going through Archie’s things, she realised. Not hers.

  Why?

  She couldn’t sleep, but she could investigate. She would shut herself away, and she’d work out what Patrick had been searching for.

  The car pulled up in front of the cottage. Laila gave Crystal a tired smile. “Thanks. I’ll take you up on that offer.”

  Chapter Seven

  Lesley extinguished the headlights and leaned back in the driver’s seat. A light shone through the front window; she must have left it on when she and Sharon left for the castle that morning. Either that, or there was a timer switch she didn’t know about.

  Her home for the next six months was a rented terraced house in Wareham, seven miles from Police HQ in Winfrith. She hadn’t chosen it: somebody from the admin team had picked it out for her. It was decent enough. Clean, on a quiet if narrow street which she repeatedly got lost trying to find. Wareham was a maze, narrow back streets, one way systems and dead ends.

  She wasn’t hungry. The cream tea still sat heavy in her stomach and she’d eaten a pack of crisps in the snack bar at Bournemouth station. Part of a meal deal she’d bought to keep Sharon going on the train, rejected by her daughter. She was sure salt and vinegar had been the girl’s favourite flavour.

  She was already prepared for tomorrow. She’d hung her favourite suit up when they’d arrived on Thursday. She’d checked there were no creases in her cream blouse. And she’d placed her mid-height court shoes side by side at the bottom of the wardrobe that took up one wall of her poky bedroom. Her work handbag was ready, notebook, lanyard, and a change of tights just in case. All she needed to do was put her purse in there and she was set.

  Sitting there, looking at the house, it occurred to her there wasn’t much point going inside. It was quarter past eight. She had two hours to fill before she could realistically go to bed, and she didn’t relish the prospect of spending them trying to make herself comfortable on the scratchy sofa in front of whatever TV Sunday night had to offer.

  She started the car. She knew where she’d rather be.

  Twenty minutes later she was pulling up to the car park in Corfe Castle, the same one she’d used earlier. Her ticket was still on the windscreen, good till midnight. The car park was quiet now, the tourists in pubs or tucked up inside their caravans or holiday cottages. Lesley shuddered at the thought.

  She strode towards the path she’d taken with Sharon earlier and followed what she remembered of the route. The air was damp, a fine mist threatening to turn to drizzle. Maybe these trousers weren’t so bad after all. She might need to rethink her polished shoes and skirt suits, if all the crime scenes turned out to be like this one.

  She eased her way through a kissing gate and emerged onto the field where the archaeological dig was taking place. The low mounds were eerie in the dark and she walked slowly, aware she could easily trip. The tent where they had found the body was dimly illuminated.

  She lifted the police tape and ducked beneath it. There should be a uniformed officer out here, keeping watch. Until the forensics people had done their work.

  She picked her way over the rough grass to the tent, wishing she’d thought to bring overshoes. She put a hand on the canvas.

  “Hello?” She pulled the canvas to one side. “DCI Clarke here. Why is no one on watch?”

  Gail Hansford was inside, alone. She crouched on the ground, examining blood spatter in the light of a torch. She turned, startled. “Ma’am.”

  “You’re a civilian. You don’t have to ma’am me.”

  “True.” Gail stood up. “I don’t know...”

  “My name’s Lesley. How come you’re here on your own?”

  “I could ask the same thing of you, Lesley.”

  “Touché.” Lesley looked down at the ground. “They took him away already?”

  “Pathologist didn’t want to be kept hanging around. He was missing his granddaughter’s birthday.”

  “I don’t care if he was missing a royal bloody garden party,” said Lesley. “If evidence has been compromised…”

  Gail shook her head. “Don’t worry. Brett and Gavin documented everything. The photographer we use was nearby, taking pics of kestrels. So we got everything we needed.”

  “You don’t have your own photographer?”

  “CSM is a team of four. Gavin and Brett were available, Sunil wasn’t. Normally Gav takes the photos, but for a case like this, we use a local freelancer. He did my daughter’s wedding, he’s a good bloke.”

  Lesley hadn’t thought Gail was old enough to have a married daughter. “So what d’you do if there are multiple crime scenes for you to cover?”

  Gail smiled. “Doesn’t happen all that often. We’ve trained local CID teams to dust for prints, so that covers most break-ins and burglaries. If there’s something bigger, we get involved.”

  “But Bournemouth is part of your patch. Surely you have serious crime there.”

  “Oh, we do, Ma— Lesley. It can get nasty in Bournemouth. Last month we had a stabbing in the town centre and four domestics that needed forensic analysis. Brett gets freaked by it, won’t go near the place unless he has to for work.”

  “One stabbing and four domestics. That’s all?”

  “The stabbing kept us busy for a week. Closing time, crowded pub, no one making any sense. The guy lived, thanks to Poole Hospital. But his girlfriend’s brother – he’ll be looking at the inside of a cell for some time.”

  Lesley whistled. “Where I come from, a stabbing and four domestics is a quiet night.”

  “Don’t get me wrong. We get our share of violent crime down here. But most of it doesn’t need forensics. And it’s dwarfed by the property crime. You’d be surprised how insecure the average holiday home can be. The grockles – that’s what some people call holidaymakers – don’t seem to be very good at closing windows and locking doors.”

  “It’s not their property, so they don’t pay as much attention,” Lesley said.

  “Exactly.”

  Lesley sniffed. “So what have you found here so far? And you still haven’t told me why you’re on your own.”

  “DS Frampton sent everyone home. I went home, but then it was playing on my mind.”

  “You live far away?”

  “Swanage. With my little boy. It’s five miles from here.”

  “I know Swanage.” She and Sharon had walked along the beach on Saturday afternoon, enjoying ice creams and the feel of the sand between their toes. “Where’s your son now?”

  Gail looked away. “His dad has him on a Sunday night.”

  “Ah. So, tell me, anything useful?”

  “You saw the victim’s injuri
es?” Gail asked.

  “I did. What was visible where he’d been left, anyway.”

  “Yeah. The pathologist said cause of death was the blow to the back of the head. Possibly multiple blows. We’ll know more after the post-mortem.”

  Lesley resolved to attend the post-mortem in person. What she’d heard so far about the pathologist didn’t fill her with confidence.

  “Defensive wounds?” she asked.

  “None apparent. His position would indicate that he turned after being hit, then fell to the ground. He was taken by surprise.”

  Lesley looked down at the ground. Gail had placed protective plates around the inside of the tent and each of the two women was standing on one. She wished the body hadn’t been moved so quickly.

  “I don’t suppose you can show me the photos?”

  “I’ve got them on my phone. Let’s go outside.”

  They left the tent. Gail pulled down the top half of her forensic suit and took a phone out of her back pocket. She wore jeans and a dark fleece, with a scarf that caught the torchlight and brought out the blue of her eyes.

  “Here.” Gail held up a photo of the body. It had been taken from the side, showing the twisted angle the man had been left in. She flicked through more images, including close-ups of the man’s hands, which were uninjured, and the wound on the back of his head.

  “Looks like a blunt instrument,” Lesley commented.

  “Probably. We’ve searched this field, as well as the undergrowth along the roadside and the trees by the river. No sign of the weapon.”

  “So the killer took it with him.”

  “Or her.”

  Lesley raised an eyebrow. “You think it was a woman?”

  “Not specifically. But I think we should keep an open mind.”

  “Of course,” said Lesley. “So there was no sign he’d been moved?”

  “No disturbance around the body. You did a good job of making sure none of the blokes trampled all around it.”

  “Blokes?”

  “DS Frampton and PC Mullins,” Gail said. “The paramedics. Lots of blokes round here.”

  “PC Abbott was here too.”