Chill Factor (5 page)

“Today,” I began, after the formalities had been
committed
to tape, “at about five p.m., police officers were called to number 15, Marlborough Close, Heckley. Did you make that call, Mr Silkstone?”

“Yes,” he replied in a firm voice, and Predergast nodded his approval.

“When they arrived there,” I continued, “they found the body of a man believed to be one Peter Latham. He was lying dead in the kitchen. Did you kill Mr Latham?”

That threw them into a tizzy, but I wasn’t in a mood for tip-toeing round the issue. I wanted it sewn up, so I could go home. Silkstone had been offered a meal; Prendergast had probably dined lavishly on smoked salmon and seasonal
vegetables
, washed down by a crisp Chardonnay; I’d had a Cornish pasty twelve hours ago. And, I remembered, four chocolate digestives in Gilbert’s office. Prendergast grabbed his client’s arm and told him not to answer, as I’d expected.

“That’s a rather leading question, Inspector,” he said.

“And I’d like a leading answer,” I replied.

“I think I’d like to confer with my client.”

“Mr Prendergast,” I said. “It is after midnight and I am tired. Your client has had a stressful day and is probably tired, too. Do you not think it would be in his interest to conduct this interview in the morning, when we all have clear heads? If you are constantly asking for adjournments we could be here until the day after tomorrow.”

Except, of course, that there would be other places where Prendergast would prefer to be tomorrow. Like the golf course, or entertaining one of his corporate clients who was having alimony problems. Silkstone himself came to the
rescue
. He ran his hand over the top of his head and massaged his scalp with his fingers, before saying: “It’s all right, Mr Prendergast. I’d like to answer the inspector’s questions.”

“In which case,” I stated, “I would like it on record that this interview is continuing at your insistence and not under any duress from me.”

Prendergast put the top on his fountain pen and sat back in his plastic chair.

“Why did you make that phone call, Mr Silkstone,” I asked.

“Because Peter was dead.”

“You knew he was dead?”

“I was fairly certain.”

“You didn’t send for an ambulance?”

“There was nothing anybody could do for him.”

“Who killed him?”

“I did.”

Prendergast sat forward in an involuntary reaction, then relaxed again.

“Tell me about it.”

“I followed him home. We had words and I pulled a knife out of the set of carvers that just happened to be on the worktop. I stabbed him with it, in the chest, and he fell down. He moved about for a bit, then lay still. I could tell he was dead.”

“What did you do then?” I asked.

“I sat in the other room for a while. Driving there I’d been seeing red. Literally. I always thought it was just an expression, but it isn’t. I’d been mad, raging mad, but
suddenly
I was calm again. I could see what I’d done. After about ten minutes I rang the police.”

“So you are confessing to killing Peter Latham, by
stabbing
him in the chest?”

“Yes. I did it.”

“And the man is indeed Peter Latham?”

“Yes, it’s Peter.”

“You knew him well?”

“Yes.”

“So why did you kill him?”

Silkstone put his face in his hands and leaned forward until his forehead rested on the little table that separated us.

I said: “Why did you follow him home and stab him?” and he mumbled something through his fingers.

“I’m sorry…?” I said.

He sat up, his eyes ringed with red. “He killed her,” he told us.

So that was it, I thought. Some old score settled. Some grudge over an old sweetheart, real or imagined, that had
festered
away for years until it could be contained no longer. I’d seen it all before. I even held one myself. “Who did he kill?” I demanded.

“My wife. He killed my wife.”

I leaned forward until my elbows were on the table. “When was this?” I asked. “When are we talking about?”

“Today. This afternoon. He…he…he raped her. Then he strangled her.”

There was a “clump” as the front legs of Sparky’s chair made contact with tiled floor, and Prendergast’s eyes nearly popped out. I interlaced my fingers and leaned further
forward
.

“You’re saying that Latham killed your wife this
afternoon
, Mr Silkstone?” I said, softly.

He looked up to see if there was a clock on the wall, but it was behind him. “Yes,” he replied.

“Where exactly did this take place?”

“At my house. I came home early and saw him leaving. She…Margaret…she was upstairs, on the bed. He’d…he’d done things to her. So I followed him home and killed him.”

I looked across at Sparky. “Sheest!” he mumbled.

“Interview terminated while further investigations are made,” I said, reading off the time and nodding for him to stop the tape. I rose to my feet and glanced at the hotshot lawyer who looked as if he was trying to run uphill with his shoelaces tied together. “I think it’s safe to say we’ll be
holding
your client for a while, Mr Prendergast,” I told him.

“I’m not surprised, Inspector,” he responded, shaking his head.

The estate agent’s advert had said that Mountain Meadows was a pleasant development on a flat strip of land alongside the canal. There were only seven houses, all detached and with decent gardens. Sparky and myself went to investigate, in my car, after ringing Mr Wood with the latest bombshell. The roads were empty and I drove fast. Soon we were clear of the streetlamps, tearing along through the night.

“You seem to know where you’re going,” Dave observed.

“I came to look at them, once,” I replied.

“What? You were thinking of moving?”

“Mmm.”

“You kept that quiet.”

“I don’t tell you everything.”

A cat darted halfway across the road, then stopped and stared into my headlights. I hit the brakes and the front of the car dipped and pulled to the right as a wheel locked. The moggie regained the power of movement and leapt to safety.

After a silence Dave said: “You and Annabelle?”

“Yeah. We could have afforded one reasonably
comfortably
if we’d pooled our resources.”

Annabelle was my last long-term relationship. We were together for about five years, which was a personal best for me, but she decided the grass was greener when seen through the windscreen of a Mercedes. I live in the house I inherited from my parents, and she owned an old vicarage. When things were good between us we’d done the tour of a few places, including Mountain Meadows. On paper it had looked ideal, but a quick visit one summer’s evening destroyed the dream. The smoke from all the barbecues and the incessant drinky-poos with the neighbours would have ruined our lungs and livers. Then she left me, so it was just as well that we hadn’t moved.

Except, maybe, if we had… Ah well, we’d never know.

“So what do you think,” Dave asked, changing the subject.

“We’ll soon find out,” I replied. “This is it.”

I turned off the lane and slowed down for the speed humps, hardly recognising the place. The darkness was almost absolute, broken only by an occasional lighted
window
, and all the twigs with garden centre labels on them that had dotted the open plan gardens were now luxuriant shrubs and trees. As my headlights swung around, probing the shadows, we saw that the conservatory salesman had done a roaring trade, and since my last visit the registration letters on the cars parked outside every house had progressed two places along the alphabet. Two houses, next to each other, had speedboats. Tony Silkstone had told us that his house, The Garth, was the last one on the right. “The one with the converted gas lamps along the drive,” he’d added. Somebody’s million-watt security light flicked on behind us, turning night into day.

The panda sent by Inspector Adey was parked outside The Garth. We’d radioed instructions for them to guard and contain the property until we arrived. I freewheeled to a standstill behind it, yanked the brake on and killed the lights as the two occupants opened their doors and stretched upright. “Got the key?” I asked the driver.

“Right here, Boss,” he replied.

“Thanks. Hang around, we might need you.”

The converted gas lamps were not switched on and a Suzuki Vitara stood on the drive, nose against the garage door. The house was in total darkness, although all the
curtains
were pulled back. Dave put the key in the Yale latch, turned it and pushed the door open. When Silkstone dashed out he hadn’t locked the door deliberately; he’d just pulled it shut, or it had slammed behind him. Mr Yale had done the rest. So far, so good.

As we stepped inside a wind chime broke into song above our heads. “I could do without that,” I hissed.

The feeble illumination from a digital clock was enough to tell us that we were in a kitchen, and it was a good deal
larger than the last one we’d stood in. Edges of implements and utensils in chrome and stainless steel reflected its glow. Unblinking green and red pilot lights watched us, like
animals
in the jungle, wondering who the intruders were, and a refrigerator added a background hum.

I found a light switch and clicked it on. The shapes became Neff appliances and the jungle animals lost their menace. Dave handed me a rolled-up coverall and I started to pull it over my feet. I wasn’t sure if it was necessary, but I was playing safe. Sometimes I cut corners, occasionally I’m reckless, but never where forensics are concerned. Hunches are no good in this game. A hunch never swayed a jury or earned the sympathy of a judge. Motive, opportunity,
witnesses
, forensic. They’re what convict criminals, with the emphasis on the forensic. You can fudge the other three, but not the forensic. That’s what I’d always believed, and, so far, it had done well for me. That was the received wisdom, as taught at Staff College.

We had a lot to learn.

“Close the door,” I said, and Dave pushed it shut with an elbow. We pulled latex gloves on to our hands and eased our feet into over-socks. We didn’t bother to pull the hoods over our heads. My mouth was dry and I could feel my heart banging against my ribs. The thrill of the chase had long since degenerated into the drudgery of killing, the
sordidness
of death. It always does. Apart from the occasional gangland shooting there’s no such thing as a good murder. This wasn’t a straightforward, cut-and-dried jealous
husband
killing any more; it was something squalid. A clock was ticking somewhere in the room, measuring each second with well-oiled precision.

“OK?”

“OK.”

“C’mon, then.”

The interior door opened on to a hallway. I wasn’t there to admire the furnishings and look at the pictures – that
would come later – but I couldn’t help doing it. I switched the light on and absorbed the scene.

The Axminster carpet was covered in swirly patterns and felt as heavy as leaf mould under the feet. Facing us was an oil painting of a vaguely European city scene on a rainy day, churned out on a production line in Taiwan, hanging over an antique captain’s desk that I’d have accepted as a week’s salary anytime. The wallpaper was red, cream and gold stripes and a grandfather clock modelled on Westminster stood in a corner. Here, I thought, lived a man who knew what he liked. I found another switch and illuminated the staircase.

It’s the boss’s prerogative to lead the way. I climbed the stairs slowly, keeping well over to the left in case we needed to do a footprint check on them, and Dave followed. “Silkstone said first door on the right,” he reminded me.

The door was open, and we could already see what we’d expected by the glow from the landing lights. I reached around the doorframe and found the bedroom switch, just to do the job properly.

She was lying face down on the bed and appeared to be naked below the waist. I stepped forward into the room and stooped beside her, looking into my second dead face that night. There was a pair of tights knotted round her neck, and the bulging eyes and pig’s liver of a tongue lolling from her mouth confirmed that she’d died by throttling. I’d have
preferred
the knife in the heart, anytime. I scanned her body feeling like the worst sort of voyeur and noticed that she was, in fact, wearing a short skirt that had been pulled up around her waist. My eyes went into the routine, as they had done too many times in the past, and the questions popped up one by one like the indicators on an old-fashioned cash register: Signs of a struggle? Anything under the fingernails? Bruising or bleeding? Is this where the attack took place?

Dave was standing just outside the room, to one side, and I rejoined him. “Seen enough?” I asked, and he nodded. We
stepped carefully down the stairs and retraced our path back out to my car. I rang Gilbert and told him the news. He’d contact the coroner and the pathologist and off we’d go again. We decided to get the SOCOs on the job
immediately
and leave everything else until after the morning meeting. Which was, I noticed, looking at the car clock, just six hours away.

“You didn’t really want to live here, did you?” Dave asked as we sat waiting.

“It was just a thought,” I replied.

“You wouldn’t have been happy.”

“I’m not happy now.”

“Unhappy with money in the bank is better than
unhappy
skint,” he replied.

“I suppose so.”

“This’ll bring the property prices down,” he added,
looking
out of the window.

“That’s a consolation.”

The SOCO’s white van came swaying round the corner, bouncing over the speed humps and triggering the big
security
light. “Looks like Michael Schumacher’s on duty tonight,” Dave observed as we opened our doors. I pointed to a spot behind me and the SOCO parked there and doused his lights.

He’s young, fresh faced, and can still boogie ’til dawn then appear in court bright as a squirrel. “Hi, Mr Priest,” he said, slamming the van door. “What’s going on? Is it
two-for
-the-price-of-one night, or something?”

“First of all, it’s Charlie,” I told him. “Secondly, there are people in bed and I’d prefer them to stay there, and thirdly, don’t be so bloody cheerful at this time in the morning.” We told him what we’d found, and a few minutes later another patrol car came into the estate, followed by the other SOCO and the photographer. Bedroom lights came on in the
neighbouring
houses and curtains twitched. We were having an operational meeting, in hushed voices, when we heard a
police siren in the distance, gradually growing louder. A minute later a traffic car, diverted off the motorway, careered round the corner and nearly took off over the humps. Somebody had dialled 999. I had words with the driver,
persuaded
him to turn his blue lights off, and sent him back to cruising the M62. A man from one of the houses joined us, saying he was chairman of the local Neighbourhood Watch, demanding to know what was going on. He wore a
flying-officer
moustache and a dressing gown over pyjamas. I
ushered
him to one side and asked him – “just between the two of us” – what he knew about the people who lived at The Garth, adding that I’d be very grateful if he could put it all in writing for me, before nine o’clock in the morning. He wandered off composing a hatchet job on the neighbour with the ghastly street lamps in his garden.

That was all we could do. Priorities were identification of the bodies and times and causes of death. These would be checked against Silkstone’s story and we’d see if anything else we discovered supported or disputed the facts. If he were telling the truth the Crown Prosecution solicitors would decide the level of the charge against him; if he were lying I had a job on my hands.

We left the experts doing their stuff, with the uniformed boys outside to keep the ghouls at bay, and went home. Come daylight, we’d be back in force.

While I was addressing the troops about the killing of Peter Latham, young Jamie Walker was practising the new scam he’d learned at the detention centre. He’d strolled into a pub in the town centre, one he knew the layout of because they had no scruples about serving juveniles, and sidled his way towards the toilets, carefully avoiding being seen by the bar staff. When nobody was looking he’d slipped upstairs to the landlord’s living quarters and rifled them. Pub landladies collect gold jewellery like some of us collect warm
memories
, and he made quite a haul. He escaped in a Mini taken
from the car-park and celebrated by driving it through the town centre flat out. The traffic car that came to Silkstone’s house had earlier chased young Jamie for a while, but he escaped by driving along the towpath. Two of our pandas spent the rest of the night driving from one reported
sighting
to another, without success. We know it was Jamie because he left fingerprints in the pub and in the mini, which he had to abandon before he could torch it.

I found all this out much later. When I arrived home I took off all my clothes, found a fresh set for next day and cleaned my teeth. I slipped under the duvet and closed my eyes.

The house Annabelle and I nearly bought was two along from Silkstone’s, backing on to a rocky field that the estate agent called a paddock. It had a double garage that
dominated
the front aspect, with an archway over the path and a wrought iron gate. Inside were four bedrooms, two with
en suite
bathrooms, and a study. The downstairs rooms had dado rails and patio doors, and the next door neighbours were members of the National Trust. They introduced themselves, saying we’d be very happy there, and gave us some membership forms. Annabelle said they were sussing us out.

We could have been happy there. The house was warm and dry and airy, with decent views over the fells; and
pissing
-off the neighbours would have been no problem. We could have locked the doors and closed the curtains, and played her Mozart and my Dylan to our hearts’ content. I’m sure we’d have been very happy there if we both hadn’t been such bloody reverse snobs.

Today – no, yesterday – I pulled a carving knife out of a dead body, standing astride it as if I were harvesting carrots. Play the film in reverse and you’d see the knife going in,
feeling
its way between rib and cartilage, following the line of least resistance as it severed vein, nerve and muscle. A
dagger
in the heart doesn’t kill you. It’s not like an electrical short circuit that immediately blows a fuse and cuts off the
power. Blood stops flowing, or pumps out into the body’s cavities instead of following its normal well-ordered path, and the brain dies of starvation.

Today it was strangulation. A pair of tights knotted around the neck, stopping the flow of air and blood until, again, the brain dies. A pair of tights: aid to beauty; method of concealing identity favoured by blaggers; murder weapon. She had black hair and white skin, and may have been
attractive
, once. Before fear twisted her features and the ligature tightened, building up the pressure in her skull until her
eyeballs
and tongue tried to escape from it.