PAIN HAS A PERMANENT ADDRESS - READ BETWEEN THE LIES

Chapter One The moment I saw the female police constable standing outside my office, I should have turned around and walked the other way.  I can see that now.  I should have said, “Please send my apologies to the Detective Inspector, but I am busy working on another case.”  But, as usual, my curiosity got the better of me, and once I saw the crime scene and heard the background, I was hooked.   The female constable in question was Melanie Softly.  She was never the most social person, which might have had something to do with her low regard for people in general—and her even lower tolerance of them.  She’d been married briefly, but now her parents looked after her young son while she worked. She didn’t hide her bisexuality, but it wasn't a topic she was interested in talking about.  I suspected she'd had women in her life she cared for; now she focused on her child and work.  She waited for me outside my office in the town centre in her uniform, drawing inquisitive glances from passers-by.   I followed her to her marked police car, and we took the coast road before turning off at Oxmarket Creeting, where we were met at a crossroads by Sergeant Patrick Higgins on a motorcycle. We followed him down a twisting secondary road. The forest stretched all round, the branches hung mournful, heavy with damp in the grey morning.  Round the bend, we came to a row of parked vehicles – two cars and a van.  Higgins stopped and dismounted while Softly and I got out.  “Morning, John.” Higgins removed his helmet, giving me his usual derisive grin.  “Morning, Pat. What’s this all about?”   His grin widened. “Walk this way, and I’ll show you.”    A sandstone arch marked the entrance to the forest. A signpost pointed out several walking trails. The red trail took an hour and covered approximately two miles. The purple was shorter, but it took in an Iron Age fort. The forests were near the edge of the cliff, and the sound of breaking waves and the breeze rustling through the trees was exhilarating.   Fallen leaves were piled like snowdrifts along the ditches and the breeze had shaken droplets from the branches. The area was ancient forestland; rich damp earth, rotting boles and mould: a collection of smells.  Now and again, between the trees in the distance, a railing fence marked the cliff-edge.  Above and beyond it, the North Sea in all its raging glory.  Breezing past Higgins, I left the footpath and climbed up a small slope. At the top of the ridge, three trees sat on a knoll that provided an uninterrupted view of Oxmarket. I knelt on the grass and felt the early morning wetness soak through my trousers. The path was visible for a hundred yards in either direction.   During my time with the security services, terrorist cells would often bury arms caches in open countryside, using line of sight between three landmarks to hide the weapons in the middle of fields with nothing on the surface to mark the spot.  Searching for such caches, I’d learned how to study the landscape, picking out the features that caught the eye.  It might be a different coloured tree, or a mound of stones or a leaning fencepost.   In a sense, I was doing the same thing – looking for reference points or psychological markers.  Some crimes are a coincidence – a coming together of circumstances.  A few minutes or a few yards one way or the other and the crime might not have happened.  This one was different.   “Someone used this spot to watch people,” I told Higgins, as sunshine broke through the early morning mist. “See how the grass is crushed. Somebody lay on their stomach with their elbows here.”  As I was speaking, I glimpsed what looked like a dog whistle caught in a mesh of brambles a dozen yards away. I rose to my feet.  “Can I have some latex gloves?”   He handed me a pair and I slipped them on. I reached carefully through the thorny branches and grabbed the whistle.   Higgins held out a transparent evidence bag.  “That looks significant.” “I won’t really know until I’ve seen the crime scene.” “You’d better brace yourself for that.” “That bad?”   He turned. “This way.”   I followed him to the place in the forest known as the ‘Ogre Tree.’ Underneath its outstretched branches, the landscape emerged through the morning mist.   The fields on the cliffs were divided by hedges and patches of evergreen scrub. The stream twisted like an artery through some beech trees.  Blue and white police tape sealed off the area.  Spotlights had been set up around an adjacent barn, whitewashing the forest.  More police tape sealed off the farm track. At the end of the track lay a narrow lane, blocked in both directions by police cars and vans.   Makeshift barriers and a checkpoint had been erected. I gave my name to a young policewoman holding a clipboard before we picked our way along the track. I reached the barn and looked across a field to my destination.   Duckboards covered the rest of the journey and white plastic stepping stones led to the base of the Ogre tree, fifty yards away. The blades of a plough had created a teardrop shape around the boot.   Police photographers jostled for space with the forensic team around a large white tent.   I expected Kira would be in there, leading from the front. She had spent the night at my house and I hadn’t heard her leave. I wondered where she had gone when I woke up, but she had left a note saying, “See you later.” I didn’t expect it to be this soon.  She was the Home Office Pathologist and, initially our relationship had been prickly, but gradually things had improved. She saw what my cases meant to me, how consumed I became with them. Those were the same qualities that had driven a wedge between my previous girlfriend and me, but Kira had been different.   A familiar face emerging from the group in white overalls shook me from my reverie as he walked towards me. “Morning, John.”   “Morning, Paul, what have you got?”   “A mutilated body.”    “Who found him?”   “Some boys. It’s usually some boys who find bodies.”   “When?”   “This morning.”    “Any idea who it is?”    The Detective Inspector paused before answering.  “We haven’t been able to identify him yet.”    “Do you know how he died?”   “You’d better take a look yourself.”   I took a deep breath. But nothing would have prepared me for what I saw.   Chapter Two Initially, I couldn’t see the body. But I could smell the blood - strong and coppery, settling at the back of my throat. Its smell and its taste tended to lodge in the back of the throat. It was overwhelming.  A flashgun fired in rapid bursts as a photographer shot close-ups of the corpse. I moved to the side and saw the body for the first time.  The man was lying face up on the ground. His clothes were tattered and one of his shoes was missing, as were the toes on the lockless foot.  I stared at the mutilated figure. It was as if whatever had attacked had played a tug of war with the carcass.  Or maybe the victim had still been alive when it happened.   The man’s belly had split in two and part of his lower jaw was missing.  His upper set of teeth grinned up bloodily at me but below was just bright gory meat down to the exposed throat.  Above the monstrous invasion, the victim’s eyes were still open.  Open wide and staring.  Except one eyeball looked up as if to see what was inside its head, while the other one peered downwards as if it couldn’t believe the lower jaw had gone.   I took deep breaths to prevent myself from being sick.  Kira turned and looked to me. “Do you know him?”   I shook my head.   “Have you any idea about the cause of death?”  DI Silver asked from behind me.   “Are you asking me to speculate, Detective Inspector?”   “I wouldn’t dare, Doctor.”   “I’ll have a clearer indication once I get the body back to the laboratory.”   “Could he have died of natural causes and the forest’s scavengers did this to him?”  I asked Silver.   “I don’t think the local wild life could have done this, do you? Would you like to examine the body yourself, John?”   With a nod of approval from Kira, I knelt for a closer look.  My fingers flew here, there, and everywhere, feeling, pressing, unbuttoning, and examining.  Kira had discussed at length on how to carry out a swift examination but also to be thorough so as not to get in the way of a police investigation where time was crucial.  Finally, I sniffed the dead man’s lip. A hint of alcohol. I glanced at the sole of the remaining shoe   “Has he been moved at all?”  I asked.   “No more than necessary for the purpose of my examination,” Kira replied.  “I’m a bit nervous about moving the body for obvious reasons.”   “Well?” Silver persisted.   I stood and moved a few paces back from the body.   “He was attacked from behind,” I began.  “Knocked over with great force.  The ground is too dry for footprints, and in this part of the forest you’ve got heather growing everywhere.”  I pointed to where some heathers had been flattened in places, the stalks snapped.  “Not conclusive because the vegetation damage could have been walkers in heavy boots any time in the last couple of weeks, but the attacker could have waited here until the victim walked past.  There was a dog whistle snagged on a branch.”   “Where is that now?”  Silver asked.   “Higgins has it,” I replied.   I began moving within the confines of the tent in slow sweeps, bent almost double, parting the grasses and heather with my gloved hands.  I stopped where the grass was shorter, then bent again and picked up an object so small that at first, I couldn’t make out what it was.   “What have you got, John?”  Kira asked.   “Not sure yet,” I said.  “Can you pass me an evidence bag, please?”   She handed me one while I continued my fingertip search and crouched again to slide the scraps into the bag.  I then laid the bag on the palm of my hand so that Kira and Silver could see inside.   “Torn scraps of paper.” Silver sounded disappointed.   “Could be anything,” Kira added.   “It’s not ordinary litter,” I said.  “It’s not sweet paper or crisp packet.  And anyway, why tear them into pieces.”   “What then?”  Detective Inspector Silver asked.   “It’s stiff, shiny,” I told them.  “My guess is it was a photo.”   “Who prints out photos these days?”  Kira asked.   “Good point,” I said.  “People mainly take digital pictures and then post them on f******k or Twitter.”   “So somebody up here tore up a photo,” Silver said.  “A fit of rage perhaps?  And was this torn by the victim or the murderer?  And it would be good if we could find the rest of it.”   Kira laughed.  “With this breeze, the rest will be halfway to Amsterdam by now.  John found these pieces in the longer grass.”   The sound of a commotion outside drew us all out of the crime scene tent.  Several people were shouting at once.  Reporters and news crews had crossed the police tape and were charging up the farm track.  At least a dozen uniforms and plain-clothes converged on them and formed a barricade.   One reporter pivoted and ducked under the line.  A detective tackled him from behind and they both finished up on the ground.    Silver started to remove his forensic overalls.  “Damn!”   “What’s the matter?” Kira asked.   “It’s feeding time.”   Moments later he disappeared into the throng.  I barely saw the top of his head.  He ordered them to step back...further still.  I saw him now. The TV lights bleached his face.  “My name is Detective Inspector Paul Silver.  At 6.55 this morning the mutilated body of a man was discovered.  The body will be taken away for the Home Office pathologist, and we will not release any further details until we have the results.”   Each time he paused, a dozen flashguns fired and the questions came almost as quickly. “Who found the body?”  “Any idea who the victim is?”   Some of them were answered, others were parried.  The DI looked directly at the cameras and maintained a calm, business-like demeanour, keeping his answers short and to the point.   There were angry objections when the impromptu press conference ended and Detective Inspector had to take a call on his mobile.  Pushing himself clear with his shoulder, he reached my side and guided me towards his car.   “A missing male has just been reported.”   “By whom?”   “His partner,” he replied.  “I’m now on my way.”   “Do you want me to tag along?”   “You’re the Suffolk Constabulary consultant, and this is part of the job. Unless you need more time at the crime scene.”  “I guess I had better earn my retainer, then.  Let’s go.”   Chapter Three Just after nine o’clock, DI Silver and me, pulled up outside a ramshackle group of buildings and pole sheds on the eastern approach to the low curves of the Suffolk coastline.  The sign on the gate read: Oxmarket Boarding Kennels and Cattery.  Silver parked outside the engine and then killed the engine. The dogs barked, one setting off the other, as they paced in their pens.  Two men with biceps like lobster claws and wearing matching dark green polos stepped in and out of the pens giving the dogs fresh water. They glanced in our direction without interrupting their work.  A slender, graceful, and petite woman with shoulder-length blonde curls appeared out of nowhere.  She had a curving mouth, wide eyes, and smooth skin. She maintained a restrained manner as she introduced herself as Cowan Carter. She said, “Nice to meet you,” with a perfunctory smile.  She had a modified American accent lacking the patronizing quality heard from cousins across the water.  She led us through an iron gate and along a path to a neat front garden and the front door of the house. Inside, the walls were painted in a dark green and covered with a multitude of framed works of art.  Some looked like prints of cave paintings, scratched images of animals and birds.  Primitive, but lifelike.  Other photos of strange dwellings growing out of a hillside, a collage made from scraps of woven cloth, and two large abstract oils. I wanted to spend more time looking, but she'd moved on and settled on the windowsill in another room.  A desk sat in front of walls covered in bookshelves.  In one corner, an armchair with a throw stood next to a coffee table.  A glass on the table led me to believe that's where she sat when she phoned to report her missing partner.  Now, framed by the window, she looked like a piece of art herself.  The kennels formed the background.   She pointed us to a couple of chairs on the other side of the desk but didn’t offer tea or coffee.   From somewhere in the house, a television reported on the discovery of a mutilated body in a Suffolk forest.    “Have you any news on Buster?” she asked.   “Buster?”  Silver referred to his notebook.  “We understood that the name you gave over the phone was Charles Bill.”   “Sorry,” she said.  “Everyone knows Charles as Buster.”   “When was the last time you saw him?”  I asked.   “Last night. I didn't know he was missing until this morning.”    Silver and I exchanged glances.   “We have slept in separate beds for quite a while, and we are splitting up.  It's just a matter of dotting the I’s and crossing the T’s on the paperwork on this place.”   “May I ask the reason for the breakup?” Silver asked.   “His infidelity.”   “I see. Has he been staying with someone else during this time?”   “No.  He’s never stayed away overnight before.”   “Always the first time for everything.”   She looked at me with hostility. Her eyes were now red with tears.   “Have you a photograph of him?”  I asked.   “Yes.” She went to her desk and pulled open the top drawer.  She removed a framed photograph and handed it to me.  Silver leant closer for a better look.  Nothing remarkable popped out about the man in the picture, standing on the Cutty Sark in Greenwich. It was impossible to tell if the mutilated body in the forest belonged to the man in the photo.  “It was taken last year,” she said.  “Has he left any electronic equipment behind?”  Silver asked.   “Only his laptop.  That’s upstairs.”   “We’ll need to take that away for further examination.”   “Of course.”   “What about his mobile?”   “I don’t know where that is,” she replied.   “Have you tried ringing it?”   "Yes," she snapped, as though I'd asked a stupid question.   “We will need that number than well,” Silver said.   “I’ll write it down before you leave.”    At this point, a young woman came in with a German shepherd.  The dog was fitted with a black leather harness. The woman’s eyes had pupils as white as marble. Her face and arms were pale.  Her sharp features looked as though they'd been sketched with firm strokes and framed with almost-peroxide-blonde hair.  She looked twenty, but something about her manner that gave her an ageless quality, as if she were trapped in a state of perpetual youth reserved for mannequins in shop windows.  I tried to catch any sign of a pulse under her swan-like neck when I realized Cowan stared at me.   “This is my daughter, Isabella,” Cowan said.   “Pleased to meet you.”   The girl turned her head in my direction.  Her lips formed a timid and trembling smile.    She walked towards her mother, guided by the big German shepherd.  I could not take my eyes off her china doll’s complexion and white eyes. The dog paused by my side and sniffed me once.  I dropped my hand down, and it lifted his left paw after a bit of prompting.   “What’s his name?” I asked.   “Bruno.”  She smiled and leaned her slightly to one side; she played with a ring that looked like a wreath of sapphires.   “He seems like a good dog?” I said, letting go of his paw.  "Yes, he is." Bruno led her to her mother. “What’s going on, Mother?”    “Nothing for you to worry about, darling.”   “Who are these men? And where is Buster?”   Cowan looked at her daughter with concern.   “I don’t know, darling.”   I sensed a patronizing tone in her voice   “What do you mean, you don’t know?”   Cowan gave a deep sigh.  “I don’t know where he is.”   “What? What do you mean you don’t know where he is?  Have you kicked him out again?”   “No, darling, I haven’t.”   “Then, where is he?”   “I wish I knew, darling.”   “You don’t really care. You don’t love him any more.  I’ve heard you arguing.  You’re always shouting at each other.  You don’t love him.  But I do!  And you’re jealous!”   She turned away from her mother and the dog led her to the door, which she slammed behind her.   Somewhere in the distance, a car alarm went off.  This brought about a crescendo of barking from the kennels.   “Sorry about that.  Isabella thinks a great deal of Buster.  She always has. She never knew her real father, an Italian Count. He died with his mistress when he crashed his Maserati near Lake Garda. She was only four when that happened.”    We got to our feet.   “Can we have Buster’s mobile number?”  Silver asked politely.   “Certainly.” She wrote it on a piece of paper and handed it to the Detective Inspector.  “What about the laptop?”   “I’ll send somebody round to collect it, later.”    “Very well.”  She looked at us impatiently, but we stood our ground.   “Do you know if Buster was currently seeing anyone?”  I asked.   “Some German tart called Sabrina Muller,” she said tersely.   “Do you have an address?”  Silver pressed.   “I don’t make a habit of finding out where Buster’s latest w***e lives.” She turned to see that we were following her.   “Do you have any questions for us?”  Silver asked.  With her hand on the door handle, she froze for a moment.   “No, I don’t think I do.”  That was unusual, and I could see Silver thought so too.  Most partners, whether they were separated or not, would ask questions about how the police would proceed with the investigation.  We walked towards the car, both, I think, expecting her to call us back to ask the questions that should have been in her head.  But when I turned to look, she had shut the door.   “What do you think?”  Silver asked me.   “Why didn’t she ask the one question she should have asked?”   “Which was?”   “Whether we thought the body in the forest was Buster Bill.” Chapter Four We met Kira in the bar of the Waggoner’s Rest for lunch.    Inside, Derek Franklin was polishing glasses.  Silver had arrested him for drunk driving a year before, but the barman didn’t seem to bear a grudge.  “Detective Inspector? Mr Handful?  What can I do for you?  Is this work or pleasure?”   “It’s always a pleasure, Derek,” Silver said.  “But it’s a break from work. We’ll have ham and cheese sandwiches.  Enough for three people.  I’ll have a coffee.  An orange juice and lemonade for Dr Reed and a pint of Calvors 3.8 for John.”   Derek nodded, programmed the coffee machine, and disappeared out the back.  Seconds later he stuck his head round the door and briefly to ask if ham would do because he was out of cheese.  "Sandwiches will be ready soon." Franklin said as he put our drinks on the bar. Silver and I took them to the table that Kira had chosen.  The room was empty apart from a couple of foreign tourists in a corner and a local man nursing a pint.   “This is under new management, isn’t it?”  Kira asked.   “Apparently so,” I said, and took a sip from my glass.   A couple of gay men taking over the place had been a topic of conversation all over the village.  Nothing too unpleasant. The locals considered themselves above prejudice these days.  But there had been a great deal of interest and quite a few unfunny jokes.  One of the new owners appeared at the door, a silhouette against the sunlight outside.  He walked in smiling, his hand outstretched.  “Hello.  I’m Peter Hedges,” he said.    Derek came over with the sandwiches.  Silver waited until he’d left before shifting to face Kira.   “What have you got then, Doctor?”   “Hundreds of partial prints from the crime scene, but none of them as yet match the victim.  We collected fibres from the surrounding trees and shrubbery and there might be DNA from the dog whistle John found.  Unfortunately, the DNA results won’t be back for another five days.”   “Check it against the victim.  Then if you get nothing there, run it through the national database.  Tick off the boxes.”   “Okay,” she said, reaching for a sandwich.   “Anything else?”   “I’m having the victim’s dental records verified,” Kira said.  “Should have that back later on this afternoon.”   “Good stuff.” Silver wiped his mouth with a napkin.   “Also, the technical team has blown up the images on the scraps of paper John found at the crime scene.”  Kira clicked on her mobile phone and handed it to Silver before he passed it on to me.  “They were photographs, but it’s difficult to make out anything helpful from such small pieces.”   I studied them.  One of them was of a large tree.  The ‘Ogre Tree’?  It must have been in the background of the photograph.  I wondered what significance the tree had in the crime.  The other was a slice of a face.  An eyebrow and a strand of peroxide blonde hair.  “Is that Isabella?”   “Who is Isabella?” Kira inquired.   “Cowan Carter’s daughter.”   “Is Cowan Carter the missing person’s partner?”   “Yes.”   “So, who would rip up the photograph?”  DI Silver asked.  “What does that tell us?”   I shook my head.  “Not much.”   “Jealousy?”  Kira suggested.  “Anger? Betrayal?”   “Possibly.”   “Do you think this could be a crime of passion?”  Silver asked.   “I’ve never seen such a vicious attack,” Kira said. “The jugular was severed, the flesh ripped from the bone and the larynx torn to shreds.”   “So, what are you saying, Doctor?”  Silver asked.   “Whoever carried out this attack wasn’t in their right mind.”