Authors: Michael Robotham
‘She was lying in bed,’ says Cray. ‘Didn’t have a mark on her.’
‘Were the blinds up or down?’
‘Down.’
I pull the cord and a fabric blind concertinas upwards, revealing the window, which is cracked open. The sill is decorated with soft toys, knick-knacks, pet rocks, crystals and a snow dome of the Eiffel Tower. I notice a small missing square of glass in one corner.
‘It was broken from the outside,’ says Cray. ‘We found shards of glass on the floor.’
I slide open the window and look outside. The slate tiles are etched with dried moss. The drop to the ground is about twenty feet. I guess someone could have shimmied up or down a drainpipe, but the broken pane of glass is too low for anyone to reach the latch.
The room is messy, but nothing has been upset or knocked over by bodies in motion.
I look at the sketches and unframed watercolours.
‘Who did these?’
‘Harper,’ says Cray. ‘She was going to study art.’
There are books on painting and photography on a floating shelf above Harper’s desk and the sloping ceiling above her bed is dotted with Polaroid photographs. She must have liked the whole retro look – using film instead of a digital SLR. Maybe it was the sound of the pictures spitting out of the camera, or watching how the chemicals formed images on the blank paper.
‘Did you find her camera?’ I ask, glancing along the shelves.
Cray is still standing at the bedroom door. ‘It was on the back seat of her car.’
I cross the landing to Elizabeth’s bedroom where an antique cast-iron bed holds a sagging mattress as if an invisible corpse were still lying in the centre. The sheets are gone. Forensics will be searching for fibres, sweat, semen or flakes of skin.
A walk-in wardrobe leads to the en-suite. Standing amid the hanging racks of clothes, I run my fingers over the garments, feeling the fabrics. Size 12. Name brands. Most of the styles belong to past years. These are clothes being made to last by a woman once accustomed to having money, who discovered that she might not have enough.
When I pull open a drawer, lingerie spills out: G-strings and camisoles and matching bra and panties, some of them almost lighter than air. Were they gifts or did she buy these things for herself?
I slip my hand into her coat pockets, pulling out a sweet wrapper, a dry-cleaning stub, loose change, half a cinema ticket, a petrol receipt and a business card for a plumbing company.
I step into the en suite. The toilet seat is down. A single towel is hanging neatly on the rails outside the shower/bath.
Cray is waiting in the bedroom. I try to put the events in order. A panel on the front door was broken. The burglar alarm was triggered. It would have woken Elizabeth. She would have called the police. Instead she put on her dressing gown and went downstairs.
Pausing at the window, I look across the small rectangular front garden to where a railing fence separates it from a field that drops away in a gentle slope to the hedgerows that line the coast road.
‘Were these curtains open?’ I ask.
‘Yes.’
‘What about the bedside lamp?’
‘It was on.’
A book is resting on the side table beneath the light:
Life after Life
by Kate Atkinson. A bookmark pokes from between the pages, halfway through. She will not finish the story. Not unless she finds another life.
Psychologists view crime scenes differently from detectives. Physical clues and witnesses are important when it comes to
making
a case against a known suspect, but have little benefit unless they have a context. The farmhouse contains tens of thousands of pieces of information. It tells me how Elizabeth and Harper lived, what they ate, wore, drank, shared, read, listened to and watched on TV. Open any drawer, or book, or photo album and I will learn something about mother or daughter. But what good is all this information if I can’t tell which of these details are important and which are white noise?
Did Elizabeth arrange for someone to come? Did she leave her curtains open that night as a signal or out of habit?
‘I want you to do something for me,’ I say to Cray. ‘Ask DI Abbott to drive down to the front gate, turn around and drive back again.’
The DCS doesn’t ask me why. Moments later I watch from the bedroom window as Monk negotiates the farm track in the unmarked police car. It disappears between the hedgerows and I imagine him doing a three-point turn when he reaches the road. In the meantime, I stretch out on the bare mattress and pat the bed.
‘Come on, lie down.’
Cray raises an eyebrow. ‘I don’t bat for your team.’
‘Maybe you haven’t met the right man.’
‘Are you seriously going to run that line on me?’
‘Shut up and lie down.’
‘What are we doing?’
‘Listening.’
We both remain still, staring at the white-painted ceiling, until I hear the sound of the car labouring up the track and crunching over gravel. It pulls up outside the stables. A vehicle door opens and closes.
‘Could you sleep through that?’ I ask.
‘Depends how much wine I’d consumed.’
‘You’d certainly hear someone break through the front door.’
‘True.’
Retracing my steps, I descend the stairs and walk along the hallway to the kitchen and then outside to the rear gate where the lawn needs cutting and weeds have commandeered the flowerbeds. The sun is dropping quickly, etching one horizon against a fiery sky. I turn back to look at the house, which is now bathed in an orange glow. My gaze sweeps over the windows and the French doors. I watch for a long time without stirring, hearing only the slow beat of my own blood and the hoarse cry of gulls.
DCS Cray has followed me outside.
‘Was anything taken?’ I ask.
‘Mrs Crowe sometimes kept cash in the house to pay tradesmen and some of her jewellery is missing, according to her sister. We’re searching pawn shops and online dealers.’
‘What about the murder weapon?’
‘A seven-inch single-sided kitchen knife – also missing.’
‘He didn’t come prepared.’
‘Is that important?’
‘Maybe.’
I go back over the details, trying to fix the timeline in my mind. If someone broke into the farmhouse through the front door, it would have woken Elizabeth and Harper, who would have called the police. Instead the mother put on her dressing gown and went downstairs. She opened the door, had a conversation and invited the killer inside. Perhaps they argued…? No, Harper would have woken. Elizabeth must have been attacked so suddenly that she didn’t have time to cry out.
Why stage a break-in and trip the alarm? It was never going to look like a robbery – not after what he did to Elizabeth. And if someone did want to break into the farmhouse – there are at least a dozen easier places. They could have shattered one of the sash windows or jemmied the patio doors.
‘What about the pentagram and the Bible?’ asks Cray. ‘Are we dealing with some sort of ritual killing?’
‘I honestly don’t know.’
‘So you’re going to help us?’
‘I need time to think,’ I say.
She looks pleased with herself.
‘On one condition,’ I add. ‘You don’t call me again or seek my advice.’
‘Agreed.’
‘I mean it.’
‘Understood.’
Monk asks if he should lock up the farmhouse. DCS Cray nods and we wait as he threads a chain and padlock on the door.
‘I can give you an office in the incident room,’ says Cray, rolling down her sleeves and buttoning the cuffs.
‘What’s happening to this place?’
‘Officially it’s still classed as a crime scene.’
‘I’d like to come back here. It could help me understand more.’
‘I’ll get you a set of keys.’
‘I also want copies of statements and photographs.’
‘We have a 3D scan of the crime scene – the latest technology – it creates a computer-generated model of the farmhouse. You can move from room to room in a virtual sense.’
‘I’ll have that too.’
The DCS looks at her watch. ‘The public meeting is at eight-thirty. We’ll have to hurry.’
‘What are you going to tell them?’
‘As little as possible.’
Clevedon is one of those sleepy English seaside towns that seem to burst into life for a few months every summer and then hibernate for the rest of the year. Quaint. Historic. Swept clean. The locals cling to their traditions and complain about the rich interlopers who blow in from London or Bristol and buy up the best houses with the best views. These outsiders arrive at weekends in their Range Rovers and four-wheel-drive BMWs, bringing children, dogs, quinoa, rocket, coffee machines and bottles of Tanqueray.
I once brought the family to Clevedon for a bank holiday weekend. Charlie must have been about ten and Emma a toddler. We stayed in a lovely old Victorian hotel with creaking stairs and gloomy hallways and baths with clawed feet. It overlooked the town’s historic pier, which juts ornately into the Severn Estuary. I remember carrying Emma on my shoulders and buying ice cream cones at a kiosk near the Old Toll House, which had historic photographs of the bathhouses and bathing huts. The tourists still come in the summer, but only the young, the old and the brave seem to swim any more.
The community centre is already crowded with every seat taken and the overspill lined along the walls. I estimate more than two hundred people, an even spread of men and women, mums and dads, professional types, solicitors, teachers, accountants, whiskery farmers and retirees. Two North Somerset council members from opposite sides of the political divide are moving through the auditorium, glad-handing and nodding sagely, letting people know that these are troubling times but the right people are in charge.
The only other person I recognise is Terry Bannerman, a morning radio presenter who is known for his confrontational broadcasting style. During phone-ins he likes to hang up on callers he disagrees with, or who are too slow to make their point. He also likes to pick on particular groups, depending upon his mood, targeting bankers, union officials, immigrants, Muslims, welfare cheats, single mothers, gays, politicians, out-of-touch judges or health tourists, which proves that his prejudices run wide and deep, even if his listeners come from the shallowest of gene pools.
‘This could get ugly,’ whispers Monk, as he watches DCS Cray walk to the side of the stage, flanked by two constables. People notice her arrival, nudging each other and whispering. Cray nods to a local Police and Community Support Officer, a young woman in navy trousers and a vest over a blue short-sleeved shirt.
A local TV news crew has turned up plus several stringers for national newspapers, hoping to get a story. The meeting is called to order by a woman with a single swath of white running down one side of her dark hair as though a road-marking machine has run over her.
‘Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for coming. My name is Patricia Collier and I run the North Somerset Women’s Refuge. I’m also the coordinator of the Avon and Somerset Rape Crisis Support Centre. You’ll find our leaflets on a table near the door. Please take one.’
A man next to me turns to his mate and whispers, ‘Dyke.’
He catches me staring at him but his eyes don’t manage to hold mine. Perhaps it’s the Parkinson’s mask that intimidates him – the blankness of my face can look almost spectral.
‘Tonight’s meeting is about getting answers,’ continues Miss Collier, speaking with a whistling lisp featuring the sibilant s-sound. ‘But before we start I want to introduce some special guests. We have two local councillors, Geoff Fryer and Janelle Spencer. Also I’d like to welcome someone who I’m sure needs no introduction – radio personality Terry Bannerman, who has been a tremendous advocate for our community.’
There is a smattering of applause.
‘Elizabeth and Harper Crowe were part of this town and were much loved. We have some of their family members with us this evening, including Elizabeth’s sister Becca and her husband Francis. Thank you for coming.’ The young couple are sitting in the front row of chairs on either side of a baby capsule with a sleeping infant.
‘I also welcome Elizabeth’s son, Elliot, and want to say that our hearts go out to him.’
She points to a young man dressed in a heavy winter coat, who is leaning against the wall, hands in his pockets. He stands upright, raising his chin.
‘Two of Harper’s best friends are also here, Sophie and Juliet, along with her boyfriend Blake.’
The girls look to be about Harper’s age, dressed in frayed denim shorts and sleeveless puffy jackets. They’re sitting on each side of a man in his twenties with wire-framed glasses and wavy hair that he’s tried to tame with too much gel. One of the girls is holding his hand. The other is red-eyed from crying, clutching a ball of soggy tissues in her fist. All three stand up and face the crowd, revealing matching T-shirts with the slogan:
Justice for Harper
.
Miss Collier continues: ‘Many people in this room knew Elizabeth and Harper – and even if you didn’t I’m sure you are just as shocked and horrified by what happened. It has been twenty-five days since that night. There have been no arrests. This community is in shock. We’re frightened. We invited the Chief Constable of Avon and Somerset Police to address the community tonight, but he had another engagement.’
There are boos and catcalls. Patricia Collier waits for silence. ‘The Chief Constable has sent along Detective Chief Superintendent Veronica Cray, who is heading the investigation.’
‘When are you gonna do your job?’ someone yells.
‘Hear, hear,’ echoes another.
‘We’re not safe in our own homes,’ shouts someone else.
DCS Cray has been sitting on stage next to Terry Bannerman and the councillors. She gets to her feet and takes the microphone, waiting for the noise to abate.
‘Ladies and gentlemen, I have come here this evening to brief you on the ongoing investigation into the murders of Elizabeth and Harper Crowe. There are forty-four detectives working full-time on this case and every one of them is totally committed to catching the perpetrator of this terrible crime. My task force has so far interviewed more than three hundred people and taken over two hundred statements from family, friends, neighbours, visitors, tradesmen and persons of interest. Detectives have gone door to door in the local area and forensics teams have collected fibres, fingerprints and DNA samples.’