‘OK,’ I said. ‘What about the ground search team? Anything found there?’
‘Fuck all, boss, so far, but we’re pretty sure the body wasn’t moved.’
‘Thank you. Succinct and to the point. And that brings us round to the weapon.’ It had come back from forensics and lain on the desk in front of me throughout the meeting, enclosed in a transparent ziploc bag. I picked it up and held it aloft. ‘It’s an ice axe,’ I told them, ‘but it’s an old-fashioned one. Years
ago, when climbing was in its infancy, they carried what were called alpenstocks, which were about five feet long. These evolved into ice axes like this one, which I guess would have been about three feet long. They were used by climbers and ramblers back in the early days, say up to the Fifties or Sixties, when more technical stuff became available. This one could date from the Thirties, but that’s just a guess. We’re trying to find an expert who’ll tell us more about it. You can use it one way round as a walking stick, or the other way as an ice axe. It has a blade for cutting steps and a pick point for digging into ice. Or someone’s brain if you have murder in your heart. Here’s the interesting bit: like I said, they are normally about three feet long, but this one has been cut down. I’m told that the wood is ash, by the way, and the manufacturer’s name is cast into the head. Scheidegger. There should be a metal spike on the other end, and a leather wrist strap, but they’re not there now. The cut, however, is new. Bear that in mind, please: the cut is new. Somewhere, in a garage or shed, there’s a little heap of sawdust underneath a Workmate. Keep your eyes open for it. But the question is this: Why would anyone cut the axe down by about a foot before going out to murder someone?’
There was silence, until I made a shrugging gesture to invoke comments.
‘To make it more easy to carry?’ someone suggested.
I nodded agreement.
‘Or easier to hide?’
‘Possibly.’
‘Maybe they were more used to swinging a modern, shorter axe.’
‘Yep. Could be. Anything else?’
A DC from HQ raised a finger.
‘Yes, George.’
‘Perhaps it belonged to the killer and he’d carved his name in the wood?’
‘That’s a good one. A very good one. We need the missing end, or that pile of sawdust. Only the killer knows the answer, so let’s catch him and ask.’
I love it when I finish like that, on an uplifting note. It takes years of practice and they don’t teach it at staff college. Many years ago, when I played in the same football team as Tony Krabbe, a schoolteacher with more optimism than judgement tried to drum a rough draft of modern history into my head. But the causes of the Crimean conflict did not grab the interest of a youth who was on the verge of having trials as goalkeeper for Heckley Town, and Picasso’s early works were of far more interest to him than the fall of the Russian aristocracy. But one name, one bit of the story, stayed in his memory long after most others had been relegated to the recycle bin: Leon Trotsky.
Trotsky, with Lenin and Marx, was one of the
founding fathers of communist Russia, but he fell out with Stalin and after a series of adventures settled in Mexico City. I had a certain admiration for Trotsky, back in those days, and felt that the world would be a better place if Stalin hadn’t sent one of his hit men after him and Trotsky’s views had prevailed. It was the mode of Trotsky’s killing that made me think of him now: he was stabbed in the head with an ice pick.
All my life, until one evening in the cinema, I’d imagined that Trotsky had been killed with an ice
axe
. The film was
Basic Instinct
, with Michael Douglas and Sharon Stone, and Ms Stone played the part of a sex-driven, ice pick wielding psychopath. An ice pick, I learnt for the first time, was a pointed, chisel-like implement used for chipping usable pieces of ice off a big block. A popular occupation in America, but unheard of the UK. It was a revelation, and answered one burning question that had troubled me for all those intervening years. Maybe it was the latent policeman in me, but I used to wake up in the night wondering: what was a mountaineer’s ice axe doing lying around in a house in Mexico City, one of the most torrid, oppressively hot places on Earth? Now I knew the answer.
There was no such doubt or ambiguity about Anthony Turnbull Krabbe, though: he was killed by one blow from an ice axe.
‘Anything of interest about the angle, Prof?’ I asked, Monday afternoon, as I talked to the pathologist who’d done the PM.
He pulled a face, knowing that it’s possible to analyse these things until you lose sight of the facts. I wanted him to say: ‘The blade went in at this angle, so, allowing for the length of the handle, the perpetrator must have been six feet tall.’ That’s what I wanted him to say. The professor, however, knew that there were too many variables to be so certain. Did the perp rise on the balls of his feet as he struck the blow or was he crouched low, stalking his victim? Was he holding the axe handle at the end or in the middle? Was the victim stooped or walking tall? Any of these could affect the angle of entry.
‘If you push me, Chas…’
‘I do, Prof, I do, but I promise not to hold you to it.’
‘You’d better not. I’d say the blow was on the low side. Krabbe was 185 centimetres tall. Indications are that the killer was about 166.’
I wrote the heights down, for conversion later into something more meaningful to me.
‘Call it six feet one and five feet five or six,’ the prof said, helpfully.
‘Cheers. And what about the force of the blow?’
‘You mean was it delivered by a man or a woman?’
‘That’s right.’
‘How many women do you know, Charlie?’
‘Hmm, not enough.’
‘OK. So of the few you do know, how many would you say are weaker than the average man?’
‘C’mon, Prof, it’s a standard question.’
‘The blow was delivered with considerable force.’
‘A man.’
‘If you say so.’
‘Of below average height.’
‘Could be.’
‘Or a tall, strong woman.’
‘It’s possible.’
‘That’s it, then. We’re looking for a jockey or a ballerina. You’ve been a big help, Prof.’
‘Any time, Charlie. Any time.’
The girl adjusted the sports bag that was hanging over her shoulder and followed the stream of travellers along the corridor. She read the signs – Arrivals, Luggage Reclaim, Customs and, most scarily, Passport Control – but took little notice of the arrows, content to follow the group. Everybody walked so purposefully, as if she were the only person who’d never flown before.
She was frightened, knowing that what she was doing was illegal, but excited at the prospect of a new life and opportunities that would be denied her at home. And it was only slightly illegal. She wouldn’t be robbing anybody, or killing anybody, and the worst that could happen to her was to be sent home again. Her friends and what was left of her family would scoff at her, accuse her having ideas above her station, and the priest would counsel her on the evils of materialism and envy, but at least she would have tried. She would have
tried to make a life for herself that didn’t revolve around the small-minded village, the church, and ambitions that did not extend beyond marrying a local boy and having his children. And she was escaping, forever, she hoped, from a world where the past and all its evils encroached upon and shaped every aspect of daily life.
The man at Passport Control barely looked at it and gave her a hint of a smile. Was that it, she thought? A conveyor belt went around in a big circle and her fellow travellers were milling around it, waiting for their luggage to be offloaded. She had carried her bag, not handed it in when she boarded the plane, kept it with her when they transferred at Zurich, but now she was unsure of where to go next. She waited. Suitcases began to come round on the carousel and she saw a man in a business suit edge forward as he recognised his luggage. He manhandled it off the conveyor and started towards the sign that read Green Channel. She followed him.
This was the final hurdle. She was coming, her story went, on a fortnight’s vacation, to have a look at the university in Leeds or Bradford, with the possibility of one day coming to study there. She was about to become a medical student in Tirana, but the opportunities were not great, and a British qualification would be much more useful in her homeland.
She stared straight ahead as she followed the man, but tried to take in the customs officers as she strode past them. It was true. Everything she’d been told was true. They weren’t interested in her. In England, the people were free to come and go as they pleased and the whole country was covered in purple carpet. She turned a corner, leaving the customs officers and the purple carpet behind, and had her first genuine glimpse of her new world.
Faces turned towards her. Ordinary faces. Not smiling, as she had expected, but not lined with pain and fear like the ones back home. For a moment she did not realise that this was the outside world, but then she saw the taxi drivers holding their name boards, and realised that taxi drivers the world over all look the same. Some of the names they held forth baffled her. St James? Royal Court? The Duke of Wellington? Had the Duke travelled on her plane?
‘Ludmilla,’ it said, simply, on the board she was most interested in. She hesitated, taking in the man who was holding it, thinking that he did not look like a taxi driver. Their eyes met and she moved towards him.
‘You’re Ludmilla?’ he asked.
‘Yes. Me Ludmilla,’ she replied. ‘You are…?’
‘From the agency. I’m to take you to the house.’
He turned and started to walk and she followed him, slightly dismayed that he hadn’t offered to
take her bag. Englishmen were polite and romantic, she’d always believed, and her first encounter with one was a slight disappointment. But then she noticed that he walked with a limp, and decided that this excused him. He wasn’t handsome, but was interesting. He was dressed entirely in black and had a small ponytail. He was – what was the word –
cool
. She smiled to herself and trotted in his wake.
Outside, she failed to notice the hotel minibus with Duke of Wellington Hotel painted on the door. The man’s car was the best she’d ever been in, which wasn’t saying much because it was only the third she’d ever been in. It was like the one the President used. Her driver opened the door for her, put her bag in the back and climbed into the driving seat.
It was so silent – all the cars were – and didn’t leave a trail of smoke behind. In seconds they were out of the airport and on a smooth road that led, the signs said, to Bradford. It would take her some time to become used to the strange names. She pressed her nose to the window like a kid outside a sweetshop and let the images flood her brain.
The land was flat and green, and buildings were everywhere. She read the names and smiled at the familiar ones: McDonalds; Texaco and Pizza Hut. One day, soon, she’d go into a Pizza Hut and order the biggest one they did. Her mouth watered at the
thought and she realised that she had eaten hardly anything all day. The car swung off to the left without losing speed. Then round in a big arc to the right until it joined a motorway filled with speeding traffic. That was the most impressive thing: the speed of all the cars and lorries.
In fifteen minutes they were back on a small road, with green fields on one side and open moorland on the other. They passed through a village and she noticed how well-dressed and fashionable the people were. She saw the pub and the post office and, prominently situated, the square tower of the church. There’d been a lot of churches; many more than she’d expected in a country she’d been warned was Godless.
She’d meant to find a ladies’ toilet as soon as she’d left the plane, but had forgotten in her nervousness as she’d followed the crowd. Now her need was becoming more pressing.
‘Is far?’ she asked, turning to the driver.
‘Ten minutes,’ he replied. He turned to look at her, noting her pale blue eyes and long blonde hair. Real blonde, not from a bottle. He liked blondes, and that hair was just right for grabbing a handful of and twisting round your fist. She had nice teeth, too. That’s a change, he thought as he shuffled in his seat and reluctantly turned his eyes back to the road. ‘Do you speak much English?’ he asked.
‘Very small,’ she told him, illustrating the words
by holding her forefinger and thumb a little way apart. The driver nodded, the conversation evidently over. As if to confirm the fact he reached forward and pressed a button on the dashboard, and within seconds the car was filled with music: The Hollies,
He Ain’t Heavy (He’s My Brother
). She recognised the tune and shuddered with delight. This really was going to be a new beginning for her.
There were more houses now. At first they were two-storey, nicely spaced and painted in different colours. Each had a garden with a neat patch of grass and shrubs. A car, sometimes two, stood outside every one. Then the houses crowded together in long rows, with a few steps up to the doors and small yards in front. People waited patiently to cross the road, shops spilt their contents out on to the pavement, like at home, and she saw a number of women wearing traditional Muslim dress. The car turned this way and that through the maze of streets crammed with parked vehicles. She tried to remember the route they were taking, but it was impossible.
They stopped outside a shop called Spar and the driver beckoned her to follow him. Inside, the shelves were piled high with all sorts of goods. He went to a refrigerated cupboard and pointed to the ready-packed sandwiches. She chose prawn and mayonnaise. He gestured for her to take another pack so she picked up a cheese and pickle.
In two more minutes they were at the house. It was in one of the long rows, next but one to the end, and the door wasn’t locked. He pushed it open and led her inside. At first it was gloomy, but he turned on a light and she saw a staircase with a red patterned carpet. Other doors led off to both sides, with numbers on them, and she assumed that these were other apartments.