âIf he did rape her â¦' Salmon began.
âWe'll hope for DNA. There's one thing not to be known outside this office: even if he didn't penetrate the body himself, it appears he used a broom handle.' Yeadings was being atypically crude. âThen surely he'd have masturbated. Traces on his hands. He'd have touched other surfaces. But we can leave that to SOCO.'
His face was grey, locked into grim lines. âI don't need to say that catching this monster must be given greatest priority. A family at home, wiped out, overnight, in a matter of minutes.'
âAnd a little girl visiting,' DC Silver added in a low voice. âWhere does she fit in? Did the killer or killers know she didn't belong? Did they even look to see who it was?'
âThat's important,' Beaumont put in. âHow intimately was the Hoad family known beforehand? Was it planned, or a random break-in? Would the killer know by now that one of the family had escaped? Sir, what are we doing about the missing son?'
âEnquiries are being made with neighbours and through his school,' Yeadings said tightly. âSomething should soon be coming
in on that.' He looked at his watch. âTime we met up with the extended team,' he warned.
They made their way down to the Incident Room. It was already crowded, with uniform and plain-clothes officers seated at tables and on windowsills. Latecomers had filed in to stand propped against the walls or sit cross-legged on the ground. When the conversational buzz ceased, Yeadings resumed, his voice depersonalised.
âExit Wounds: a firearms subject you should be familiar with. On entering a human body, the bullet creates a neat round hole, like a mouth's small O of surprise. Once inside, the ravages begin, splintering bone, ripping cartilage, pulverising soft tissue. When it emerges from the body's denser pressure there's an explosion into open air, so the surrounding damage is extensive. Exit wounds look mightily more severe than what happened at the start.'
Yeadings paused, looking round. None of that was news to the extended team. But he'd a specific point to make about this massacre of apparent innocents.
âWhat we found at Fordham Manor Farm,' he went on, âhorrific as it is, should be seen as a single, extensive exit wound. Faced with that, we must work back to the point of entry, which eventually may prove far less momentous by contrast. And finally our objective must be to discover the first cause and the motive. Bear in mind that in any fatality the killer is the person, not the weapon.'
He was aware of a slight, restless movement in mid-room; the tensing of shoulders in barely smothered protest that he was making a lecture of it.
âI know that this is only partially a firearms case. The principal weapon was a knife, possibly knives. But the image remains true. Overall, we work backwards from exit wound to entry, all the way from massacre to intent.
âI do not need to remind you that in so complex an investigation no clue, no physical trace, no word of mouth, no implication is too minor to be disregarded. Search, expecting to find. Then consider whatever is found, however insignificant at
first sight. Each of you has an individual angle on it; the next man a different one, so share your knowledge. Pass it on, include it in your report. All investigation is a mosaic.
âYou are all, or at some time were, family men. This is a family destroyed. We cannot leave it â un â¦' For a split second his voice faltered.
Unavenged? Beaumont asked himself.
But after his burst of metaphor the Boss saw fit to rein in emotion at the last. âUnsettled,' he said firmly.
Beaumont grunted aloud. So that's what they were to do â simply settle the matter.
Put it right? Could anyone?
DS Rosemary Zyczynski parked her blue Ford Escort sufficiently far from the house to allow her time to study it while she approached the front door on foot.
Amsterdam without a canal, she thought, confronted by the flat façade with its three gables, the central one fiddle-shaped and the outer two stepped. Maybe back in the seventeenth century someone had brought an architect over from the Netherlands.
At a later date an extension had been added to each end, and their horizontal rooflines balustraded.
She saw now that the Bartons' cottage, built of dark red brick and flint, typical of Buckinghamshire, had been the original farmhouse from the late sixteenth century. At some later point prosperity had struck, prompting the landowner to aspire to building a more impressive residence. Which this certainly was, deservedly a small manor house, the lordship to which its sometime owner had bought to match it, but ridiculously carried it away to a town house in Maidenhead. Since the incomer Hoad hadn't acquired those manorial rights, he'd been accepted locally as a gentleman farmer.
According to more of what Beaumont had picked up, he was actually a townie with an inherited fortune from manufacturing, and modest pretensions to joining county society. But now, whatever dubious glory the move had brought him was over. As the familiar words had it, he'd brought nothing into the world and taken nothing out. But there could have been a more merciful way of going.
She halted on the threshold, acknowledging the nod of the constable on duty, and rebuked herself for the disdainful attitude. She was herself a townie gone countrified from choice, and no matter what the dead man had been like, she knew her uncustomary bile was to cover up revulsion at the crime.
No bodies remained in the building, but chalk marks on the floor downstairs and the children's bloodied beds would be reminder enough of the Incident Room's first sickening photographs of slaughter. What she must investigate now was
something too pitiable to be easily endured.
She stepped inside, zipped herself into sterile white overalls, pulled on plastic overshoes and latex gloves. Someone looked out from the door of an inside room and she recognised Ken Bates, a civilian photographer from Scenes of Crime. âStill here then,' she remarked.
âIf ever we get one right it has to be this one,' he said grimly. âWe're going for every minute detail. Sam's still upstairs bagging. Sing out before you go up and he'll tell you where you can tread.'
Rightly he'd assumed that her main interest was the children's rooms. Which didn't mean she'd spare herself the immediate death scene he was presently occupied with. She followed him back into the dining room, hands clasped behind to prevent touching any surface.
There it was total disarray with an overturned chair and the table crammed into a corner against a china cabinet with shattered glass doors. Behind them the once-elegant dinner and tea services were decimated and the rear wall spattered with shot.
Beyond a tall window was a second cupboard of the same style, or at least superficially so. It appeared to have been used for glassware displayed on shallow shelves backed by a mirror. But that entire portion had been swung out to show a steel cabinet behind. This in turn gaped to reveal a range of shotguns and rifles. Two sets of grips were empty.
One of the missing firearms, a double-barrelled, side-by-side twelve-bore, lay a few paces ahead of her, beside the outline of a body drawn in chalk on the polished floorboards. There was the distinct bloody tread of a shoe's toecap alongside. But no great quantity of blood, considering the number of wounds.
Z stood a moment taking it in. There was a storyline here but she needed to work out the sequence. Ken Bates resumed his work, focusing on the rubbed marks of wear on the cabinet wall behind where the guns were missing.
Z tried to get the picture. Hoad had run to defend his family with the gun and, being tackled to the ground, had somehow discharged its shot into the wall and china cabinet. The man confronted by the shotgun had then stabbed him several times,
using a knife as on his upstairs victims, but at some point he too could have removed the second firearm missing from the cabinet. There was an immediate need to identify the gun taken away.
âWhat actually killed Hoad?' she demanded.
âDidn't you get the pics I took?'
âThere was too much blood to distinguish every wound. And the Boss won't pre-guess the Prof's official findings.'
âWhatever else, there are plenty of stab wounds. He was lying face-up. Could have been blown backwards by a single shot, and then stabbed to finish him off. There was what could be a small entry wound in the chest. I never touched the body, and couldn't say for sure. If a bullet's left inside him you'll discover later at the post-mortem. Anyway nothing passed through; no bullet was found in the floorboards or walls.'
So, accepting Ken Bates's guesswork, the killer used a different firearm from the dead man's shotgun, because a spread of lead shot would surely have shown over chest or face.
If so, how did Hoad's killer get hold of the gun? Bring it with him or locate and unlock the steel cabinet before Hoad reached him? Unlikely. So perhaps he'd brought only the knife, hid away, then snatched a gun after Hoad had opened the steel cabinet. But one ready loaded? The ammo should have been securely kept elsewhere. Yet, if he'd been the first to fire, that would account for Hoad's shot going wide.
Later, had he chased the fleeing woman across to the barn with the same gun, but feared a shot in the open could rouse neighbours in the cottage? Or had he pursued and knifed her before remembering the unlocked armoury and coming back for the second, missing weapon? Doubly armed, he would be doubly dangerous.
As yet it wasn't clear at what point Hoad had been alerted and come downstairs. Before or after the others had been stabbed to death?
âHas any knife turned up?' she asked.
âNot to my knowledge. Best ask Sam.'
She gave the murder room another sweeping scan, then went to the foot of the stairs. âSam!' she called.
Bernard Weller, known generally as Sam, appeared almost instantly on the gallery above the hall. He too was now a civvy SOCO, an ex-sergeant from the force. âZ, hi. Come on up,' he invited. âUse the left side of the stairs where it's taped.'
She followed him down a short corridor to the large front bedroom where the duvet was flung back from the four-poster. One casement window was latched open and a rain-drenched curtain dragged aside. The central heating was full on. An open door revealed the en suite bathroom. The only lighting, apart from the SOCO's powerful torch came from one twin bedside reading lamp, the other of which was overturned. Weller saw her eyes swing to that, but he shook his head. âThe killer never did that. The woman must have knocked it over as she rushed out.'
âHow do you know?'
âIt's clean. There are blood smears from gloved hands along the gallery rail outside and lint from the woman's bathrobe caught on a picture frame where she pressed against it. She must have run out, got caught, broke free, perhaps kneed the killer, and was lucky to gain a few minutes and make for the stairs. Too bad that her luck ran out in the end.'
So probably she'd not been the first one attacked. But why run to the stables? Z wondered. To draw danger away from the children? Why not make straight for the farm cottage and protection from the Bartons?
âThe girls' bedroom?' she demanded.
He nodded back towards the passage. âNext one. You passed it. We've finished in there. You're free to look around. The brother's room is off the opposite wing, far door on the right.'
She went there next, putting off the worse option. She found everything normal, as untidy as any teenage boy would leave a room: magazines spilling from a chair, an old pullover slung over its back, and used underwear on the floor beside the bed. The door gaped open on his own bathroom where two dark green towels were abandoned on the tiles. Both had dried out and the smaller one showed smears of blood. Nothing excessive. A big lad of nearly sixteen, he could have nicked himself shaving.
Nobody had been in to tidy up after he'd left. And no clue to
when that might have been.
Without touching them she read the titles on two of the magazines. One dealt with Information Technology. The other, more fingered, was a catalogue for camping equipment.
If he'd spent the previous night under canvas as intended he'd have had little sleep because of the storm. Maybe he was catching up with it now and would eventually return in a bedraggled state.
But, camping, he'd surely have been with others in an organised group. There would be friends with him. A scout troop or boys from his school. Enquiries the Boss had already set in motion should turn up the necessary information.
She bypassed the bookshelves. That would require longer examination. On first sight they appeared to cover two interests: schoolwork and adventure fiction. She turned to look at the bed. There was an impression where a weight had stood on the feather duvet. Almost circular; perhaps a long, draw-top bag like the sort service men stowed their kit in?
The double doors of the wardrobe stood ajar. When she pushed at them they resisted closure. Inside there was a gap in the row of hangers on a rail and a confusion of shoes and boots on the floor. From a shelf above her head a leather travel case projected with a strap hanging down as if pulled forward when some other object was dragged from on top.
It all pointed to the boy, Daniel, having packed hand luggage before he left. But there was nothing to show whether his departure had been as previously planned, or if it was some spur-of-the-moment decision. In the three drawers of a tallboy clean clothes appeared undisturbed. She slid her hands in underneath but encountered no surprises, no papers or stash of cash.
He'd have needed both money and food, Z thought. A clue to what he'd taken must be looked for downstairs. She went down again, carefully keeping to the same side and not touching the banister rail. In the kitchen she put a tea towel over her fingers to open the refrigerator, not trusting the latex gloves to leave traces undisturbed. It was amply stocked, giving no indication of what could have been removed.
Somewhere in the house there would be a safe. She followed
the sounds of Ken Bates's movements and found him in a smaller room furnished as an office. âHave you come across a safe yet?' she asked.
He shook his head. âNot all the walls have been checked yet. But it may be one of those under-floor ones. We're not touching the carpets until the rest of the team's arrived. So far there's just us finalising photo shots and bagging. Fingerprints are on hold until we're done. Your boss is a devil for preserving the scene.'
She went through to the long, low-ceilinged drawing-room. The keyboard of a Broadwood grand piano stood open for playing: no display of photos on the top. And none on the walls. But inside the boxy piano stool was a photograph album. She turned to the latest full page and removed a studio portrait of a blond, fine-featured young man she'd have taken for twenty years old. This, she guessed, was the son, almost sixteen, said to look older than his years. The slender, pale face and light eyes were the same as those in earlier photographs from toddler years on. His longish fair hair flopped over one eyebrow like a matinee idol's.
She slid the card into her shoulder bag. This was all she'd been asked for. The rest of the tour was a bonus.
And still she hadn't seen where the little girls had been stabbed to death in their sleep. Stoically she went back upstairs, observed the room, the bloodied sheets; then returned sombrely to her car.
Â
At the Area nick she passed the boy's portrait in for photocopying and made her way to where Acting-DCI Salmon was still holding the floor, summing up Beaumont's presentation.
âRight then: approach and entry. Due to torrential rain overnight and the presence of our own vehicles, it's not been possible to identify any form of transport for the killer. But an approach on foot's unlikely, since the property is a quarter of a mile from the road, whether by driveway or through fenced fields and spinney. Both Hoad cars, BMW & Vauxhall Zafira, were found in a double garage, radiators cold. An elderly Jeep 4x4 in a converted stable had its rear fully loaded with fencing stakes, reels of wire, tools etc. According to the stockman, Ned Barton, whose cottage is nearby on the estate, it was ready for starting boundary work on Monday.
âEntry was not forced. The night caller either had a key or was let in by a member of the family.'
A hand shot up. âCouldn't he have hidden inside during the day while the house was left open?'
Salmon looked to Beaumont for a lead. âThe building has plenty of rooms not normally in use,' the DS offered, âparticularly on the top, servants' floor. There's a live-in housekeeper, who was away for the weekend. Other servants, cleaners and so on, come in daily as required.'
He advanced on the easel covered in sheets of newsprint and drew an oblong in black felt pen. âThe original house is three hundred years old, facing south-west, with three Dutch gables at the front and later extensions at each end. There are three floors.'