The Coterie

Chapter 2

Chapter Two

Heywood Park was a small, lightly treed public recreation area located approximately fifteen minutes south of the city centre and Police Headquarters. It was a park with which Chapman Bouttell was familiar. He’d been raised and educated in an orphanage just a few streets to the west of the park, in neighbouring Goodwood. As often as he saw an opportunity, he would go to the park with a couple of confidants to escape, at least for a short while, its regimented and often cruel confines. Confidants were few and far between and often hard to get within the orphanage atmosphere. This was a place where a***e, both physical and emotional, was to be expected by the young residents almost on a daily basis.

Chapman Bouttell had long forgotten the name of the Catholic order charged with running the orphanage, but it had the word ‘Mercy’ in it, he remembered; an oxymoron if ever there was one, he thought. Mercy of any degree following an indiscretion, regardless of severity, was rarely shown by those in charge.

New kids, wide-eyed and terrified, arrived regularly. Others, those who had reached the mandatory age where they were required to leave and make a life for themselves on the outside, were equally as terrified at what they might face beyond the orphanage walls. These young adults left through the huge front doors with their humble possessions clutched tightly in trembling fingers and an uncertain future ahead of them. Others were adopted, taken from the only home most of them ever knew to face an equally uncertain future as part of a family of strangers.

As a young lad, Chapman believed the adoptees were the lucky ones. They were the chosen ones; chosen to go to happy homes and to the arms of loving families to start their lives over with new-found parents who would care for them, nurture them, and love them. It was a nice thing to believe, even if it was nothing more than the wistful, albeit naïve musings of youth.

Conversely, the new arrivals were the sad, miserable souls who had suffered for most of their short lives and it was difficult for Chapman or any of the young, confused, scared residents to cement lasting friendships. However, on occasions, he was able to convince a co-conspirator that it was worth the risk to join him and slip away unnoticed for an hour or so. Inevitably, such illicit excursions into the glorious but scary freedom of the world outside the orphanage walls almost always resulted in discovery, punishable by a flogging with a well-worn razor strop: an implement of punishment with which most of the young residents of the orphanage were well acquainted, Chapman Bouttell more so than most.

Notwithstanding the oft-applied strop to his rear end, Chapman considered himself one of the luckier ones. He, for reasons he was never able to fathom, never suffered the s****l a***e that many of his fellow residents did. Punishment, regardless of its severity or how often it was applied, was never a deterrent for the young Chapman Bouttell. He learned the art of nonconformity from a very early age. It was an education that would stay with him for the rest of his life.

These days, progress in the form of ever expanding urban sprawl had swallowed much of what Chapman remembered of Heywood Park. Today, the park was slightly less than half its original size. It was not childhood memories, however, that brought him back to this place after all these years; it was murder.

A sole flickering amber street light, the earliness of the hour and the cold, stormy conditions cast a sinister ambience over the park. Bouttell looked up at the dark, leaden sky and rapidly building needles of rain stung his face. Away to the east, slender fingers of dawn’s early light struggled to introduce another day upon the still sleeping state capital, as they probed tentatively above the crest of the hills fringing the eastern side of the city.

From somewhere even further away, he heard the long, low rumble of thunder. This was one of those times when he would have liked to summon those escapist skills which served him so well in his youth, slip quietly away and go back home to his bed.

Forcing himself to focus, his eyes began to adapt slowly to the dark, shadowy recesses of the park. Gone were the sounds of laughing, playing children who filled these grounds during daylight hours. Gone, too, were the proud mothers pushing contented, gurgling babies in strollers as they watched their older children, and their neighbours’ children, run, jump, climb and scrape their knees. Life’s innocence was still tucked snugly into warm beds.

The bullet had entered the victim’s head at a point slightly below and behind the right ear, exiting in the hairline above the left eye. The absence of any trace of blood, long since washed away by intermittent showers of rain, left an ugly purple hole where the projectile had entered and plowed its deadly course through the brain, splintering bone and rendering tissue, before exploding out of the forehead.

Death would have been instantaneous. The victim had crashed face-down onto a cobbled walkway that wound its way through the park from Hyde Park Road on the northern side, to an easement access lane on the south side. Rivulets of rain dammed momentarily against the dead man’s head, before finding the path of least resistance and continuing on their meandering way over the patchwork pattern of cobblestones.

If there was any positive aspect to the scene confronting the investigators, it was both the hour and the weather conditions acting in concert to ensure the curious remained soundly ensconced inside their homes. The negative, and there were always negatives, was that these same two conditions would guarantee that there would be no witnesses to events as they unfolded earlier.

This was murder, and walk-up-starts in murder cases were much too much to hope for. The easy ones came along from time to time throughout a homicide investigator’s career, but not often enough for Chapman Bouttell’s liking. Perhaps they would get lucky. Luck sometimes played a role in murder investigations; circumstances coupled with facts, unfolding neatly, leading to a conclusion with little more than routine effort by the investigators. As he looked down at the soggy, lifeless form at his feet, Chapman knew instinctively this was not one such occasion.

Sergeant Peter Turner, General Duties Watch Commander and thirty-three-year veteran in the job, was one of the first to arrive at the scene. A big, balding man, with a waistline rapidly approaching obesity, Turner was not one of Chapman Bouttell’s favorite people.

In the context of his long career, Turner was a good cop, right up there with the best. Twice commended for his actions in the line of duty, he had more than adequately proved himself on the streets and, for the most part, he enjoyed the respect of his colleagues. It was not, however, Turner’s ability as a police officer which Chapman took exception to. Indeed, he was one of those who respected Turner’s competency as an officer of the law. It was more the attitude Turner seemed to have adopted towards the job now, thirty-three-years later, as he approached the end of his career; that ‘been there, done that, don’t give a s**t’ attitude.

Unfortunately, it was not an attitude unique to Turner. Chapman had seen it before in other cops close to retirement. He guessed it was a subconscious thing and he doubted any of them were even aware of their somewhat blasé approach. Perhaps his fellow officers thought of him the same way. After all, he had twenty-seven-years in, and was getting close to the time in the job where he considered all cops should seriously consider retirement.

No one should stay around longer than thirty years, Chapman believed. Not unless you were a commissioned officer and spent your days polishing the seat of your trousers while firmly entrenched in the ivory tower, as the administration section was known. Then you could stay forty years if you wanted to. No one ever saw much of you, anyway, and many of the front-line officers who had been around a while soon forgot you were actually still in the job.

In Turner’s case, Bouttell believed he had become way too complacent. He had got tired, fat, and lazy, and had overstayed his appointment by at least three years.

Chapman watched the big man approach, his massive shape looming out of the darkness. Turner positioned himself between the two detectives.

“What’s your take on this?” Tony Francis asked the uniformed sergeant.

Turner removed his hat and ran a huge, pudgy hand across his hairless pate. “Well,” he offered, “at first glance it looks like an execution-style hit.”

“Or a d**g deal gone sour,” Francis suggested.

“Could be, mate, could be.” Turner shrugged. “Two of my blokes on routine patrol came past here about…” he squinted in the poor light at his watch… “forty minutes ago. They found the body when they shone their spotlight over the grounds.”

“Is the area secure?” Chapman asked.

“I’ve seen to that,” Turner confirmed. “My chaps have just finished placing a cordon around the park, and I have stationed a car at each end of this walkway. Don’t want any fitness freaks stumbling through here on their early morning jog.”

Chapman looked at Turner and then up into the black sky. It was raining more heavily now. “You’re kidding, right?” he said.

“Yeah, right,” Turner chuffed.

Chapman turned to his partner. “Tony, get a statement from the two officers who found the body. You know the procedure. Don’t forget to ask about any vehicles or people in the area at the time.” He watched Francis walk away towards the park entrance and then he turned back to Turner. “Have Forensics been notified?”

“They should be on their way as we speak. The Coroner’s Constable also, and the duty medical officer to verify death.”

The man, face down on the ground at their feet, was certainly dead; Chapman hardly needed verification of the obvious. However, procedure was procedure. That was the way things were done. There could be no gaping holes which a half-smart defence lawyer could drive a truck through if, and when, the case came before the courts.

“Have you looked around? Found anything that might interest us?”

“Yeah, I had a quick look around when I arrived.” Turner nodded. “There is a wallet, over there in that garden bed.” He pointed to a small patch of low, well maintained shrubbery a few metres from where they stood. “I haven’t examined it, nobody has. Thought I’d leave that to you blokes. I assumed you’d want it photographed in situ. It may not even belong to this poor bastard.” He nodded at the body. “I’m willing to bet it does, though. It may provide some identification. If it’s empty, it could suggest robbery as a motive.”

“I doubt it,” Chapman said. “Unfortunately, it’s never that easy.” He gestured at the corpse. “What was this bloke doing here, anyway? Look at him—clean-cut, nice clothes. I don’t think he was out for a leisurely stroll in the park on a night like this. And what self-respecting mugger would have the balls to ply his trade in this shitty weather? Most street thugs are p*****s, they’re tucked up all cute and snugly in their beds.” He dropped to one knee on the wet cobblestones. “Shine your light here,” he said. “Let’s get a closer look at our friend.”

Turner held the torch steady, focusing the light on the upper half of the body. The dead man was face-down on the walkway, his facial features partly obscured. As Chapman studied what he could see of the man’s features, he suddenly felt something; something strangely familiar. He moved his face closer to the corpse.

“Hand me the torch,” he said, reaching behind him.

“What’s the problem?” Turner asked.

Chapman took the torch from Turner’s outstretched hand and directed the beam into the lifeless face. “I’m not sure,” he murmured, “but I think I’ve seen this guy somewhere before. How long before we get some floodlights here?”

“I requested a lighting plant, including a tent, as soon as I got here. It has to come from Star Force, and you know those girls, they’re scared of the dark!” He chuckled at his own joke.

A feeling of uneasiness confused and unsettled Chapman Bouttell. He had always considered himself fortunate to possess an excellent memory when it came to faces, but there was something about the dead man that bothered him. He was certain he was not a recent acquaintance, but he had met him somewhere. Somewhere in his past. Where? His recollection was vague and strangely disturbing. What was it about the crumpled, saturated body at his feet that he found familiar?