Small Mercies Read online

  Finally, with nothing much else to do, she started searching on Werneth Holdings. Slightly to her surprise, they didn’t appear to have a dedicated website. From the way that Ransome had described the company, she’d assumed they’d be large enough to have some kind of web presence. But perhaps there was no particular need for it. If their properties were all let and managed through the agents, they’d have no other obvious requirement for marketing themselves. If they owned bars or cafes, as Ransome had said, those would no doubt have their own sites.

  She found a Companies House link for the company, and followed it through to see what information might be in the public domain. There were various sets of accounts, which were up to date. Zoe opened up the most recent set, but they meant little to her untutored eye except to indicate that the company appeared to be in robust financial health. Finally, she clicked on the list of people associated with the company.

  The key directors were names she didn’t recognise, all with addresses in the county. She scrolled further down till she came to previous officers of the company, and then she paused.

  It took her a moment to place it. A name that struck her as familiar, but she couldn’t immediately recall why or how. It was only when she looked at the address below it that she remembered.

  Thomas James Miller.

  Higher Wenlow Farm.

  Higher Wenlow Farm was where they’d found the second body. Tom Miller had been the farmer they’d spoken to.

  It seemed a hell of a coincidence. Unless of course it wasn’t. When she’d first transferred to CID, her DI had always been insistent that, in police work, there was no such thing as a coincidence. ‘If you stumble across a potential link,’ he’d said, ‘start from the assumption that it’s significant. Then work out why.’

  Like most of the advice she’d received as a young copper, it was an exaggeration. Sometimes a coincidence was just that. But her gut was telling her this felt odd. It was strange enough that the investigation into Parkin’s death should have spiralled round so directly to link to the second body. But it also raised other questions. Like why the hell a sheep-farmer should ever have been a director of a property development company in the first place.

  Her first instinct was to call Annie to let her know about the discovery. Annie had always insisted she was available day or night if it helped to progress an investigation. But Zoe looked at her watch and hesitated. It was only just after four. This was almost certainly something better left for the morning. She’d be feeling more clear-headed, and maybe in the cold light of day she’d see some more obvious explanation for the connection. In any case, nothing was going to change in the next few hours.

  Even so, there was no chance now of her getting more sleep tonight. She might as well make the best use of her time. She returned to the kitchen and topped up her coffee, and then sat back down at her laptop, wondering what else it might be possible to discover about Tom Miller or any of the other current or past directors of Werneth Holdings.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Annie Delamere woke suddenly, with the sense that her sleep had been interrupted by some external factor. A loud noise, or some similar kind of disturbance.

  She was generally a sound sleeper but she’d had this kind of experience occasionally before. A couple of times, she’d been briefly certain on waking that she’d been roused by a loud hammering at the front door of the house. She generally had these kinds of experience when she’d been under abnormal stress, usually due to some work-related issue. After everything that had happened over the last few days, she was under even more stress than usual. Even so, this did feel different.

  This time she had no distinct recollection, even in the moments when she’d first woken, of what might have disturbed her. Now, lying in the darkness, it felt almost as if the echoes of whatever it had been were still dying away. As if she could almost still hear it.

  At first, the only sound she definitely could hear was that of Sheena’s soft breathing beside her. Then, as she lay motionless, holding her own breath, straining her ears, she thought she heard it.

  A movement in the garden below their bedroom window.

  She slipped silently out of bed, dragged on her dressing gown and made her way over to the window. She pulled back the edge of the curtain and peered out into the night.

  The sky had remained clear, and an almost full moon was shining down into the garden, creating a shifting vista of black and silver. There was a stiff breeze blowing, and the trees at the rear of the house were swaying rhythmically. Was that all she had heard?

  It seemed unlikely that that sound alone would have woken her. The rush of the wind in the trees had become part of the familiar nocturnal soundscape. There had to be something else.

  She peered through the narrow gap between the curtain and the wall, trying to discern anything in the shifting half-light. Then she saw it, or she thought she did.

  It was scarcely anything. Just a glimpse of movement in the very corner of her eye. Something that, for reasons she couldn’t have explained, was different in quality from the steady shifting of the trees and bushes. The movement of someone hurriedly leaving the scene.

  She left the bedroom and crossed the landing to the guest bedroom. The room offered a view of the front driveway, the trees in which they’d found the camera yesterday and the open moorland beyond.

  She stood at the uncurtained window and peered out. It took her a moment, but then she spotted two figures near the gates, little more than black shapes scurrying out into the road. A moment later, there was the sound of an engine starting and then, through the trees, she saw the dark shape of an unlit vehicle heading away.

  ‘What is it?’

  Sheena’s voice in the darkness behind Annie almost stopped her heart. ‘Jeez, Sheena,’ she said, turning to face her, ‘you made me jump.’

  ‘What is it, though?’ Sheena asked again. She was generally a light sleeper, and Annie was unsurprised she’d been disturbed.

  ‘There was someone in the garden. A couple of them, I think.’ Annie returned to the main bedroom, turned on the light, found her phone and dialled 999. Within a few moments, she’d received a commitment that a car was on its way. There was no point in trying to trace the intruders’ vehicle. It had been parked out of range of their own security cameras and she had no description. That would be a question for tomorrow, when they might be able to identify possible suspects on the CCTV and other cameras in the surrounding area.

  She ended the call and turned to see Sheena standing in the doorway.

  ‘They were actually in the garden?’

  ‘The rear garden,’ Annie confirmed. ‘Somehow it woke me. Christ knows why. I can usually sleep through a thunderstorm, but this must have been some sixth sense.’

  ‘What were they doing?’

  ‘I’ve no idea. Planting another camera. Setting up something to scare us. God knows.’ She could already see the pulse of a blue light through the landing window behind Sheena’s head. ‘Looks like support’s already here. You’re obviously privileged.’

  ‘Neurotic MP who calls out the police on a nightly basis?’

  ‘Cautious MP who’s already experienced two attempts on her life. Let’s get some clothes on and head down.’

  * * *

  Annie was relieved to see the familiar faces of Paul Burbage and Ian Wharton on the other side of the front door. At least she wouldn’t have to go through another round of explanation.

  ‘We’ll have to stop meeting like this,’ Burbage said.

  ‘You’ve drawn the short straw again, then,’ Annie said. ‘Sorry.’

  ‘Don’t be. It’s just a fluke really. You got us at the start of the shift last time. Tonight’s been a quiet one, so we were kicking our heels a bit.’

  ‘Relatively speaking, you understand,’ Wharton added with a grin. ‘Don’t want you to think we were slacking.’

  ‘Thought never crossed my mind. Just glad you were able to get here so quickly.’


  ‘You’ve had an intruder this time?’

  ‘In the garden. Two of them, I think, though I only glimpsed them as they were leaving the front gate. They had some kind of vehicle parked on the road outside.’ She shook her head. ‘And before you ask, sorry, I can’t give you any description of the vehicle. It was behind the trees and gone before I could do anything. Best bet would be to see if there are any cameras in the vicinity that might have caught anything. I’ll take that up with Andy Dwyer in the morning.’

  ‘You want us to check the garden?’

  ‘I think we should. They were here for a reason. I don’t think they could have been aware that I’d spotted them – it was only luck that I woke up and I didn’t turn on any lights – so they must have finished whatever they came here to do.’

  ‘And you’ve no idea what that might have been?’

  ‘Not a clue. We’ve had no more email contact since we found the camera. No threats. Or at least none that appear to be connected with the last incident. Andy Dwyer had the garden thoroughly searched today after he saw Sheena, but they found nothing.’

  ‘We’d better go and see then,’ Burbage said.

  ‘I’ll grab my coat and come with you,’ Annie said. ‘I already feel as if I’m not pulling my weight here.’

  ‘You’re not on duty,’ Burbage pointed out. ‘But I’m guessing I can’t stop you, given that you outrank me.’

  ‘I wouldn’t even try if I were you.’ Annie grabbed her waterproof from where it was hanging beside the front door. She turned to Sheena, who was watching from the doorway of the living room. ‘We’ll just be a few minutes.’

  ‘Take care.’ Sheena spoke in a small voice, a long way from her usual assertive tone. Annie hated seeing her that way.

  ‘Trust me, I will.’

  Annie turned back to the two officers. ‘They were at the rear of the house when I first glimpsed them. We might as well start there.’

  She led them through the house into the kitchen and opened the back door. Outside, the wind had risen and the swaying trees were noisier than ever. She stepped outside and stood back while Burbage shone his flashlight around the garden.

  At first, they could see nothing but a dark tangle of rocking branches in the trees and shrubbery surrounding the narrow lawn. The rear garden was not large and in the summer provided a cosy suntrap. On a night like this, in circumstances like these, it felt threatening, as if the trees themselves were closing in on them.

  ‘There’s something,’ Annie said. ‘In the trees over there.’ She pointed towards a corner of the garden to their left. ‘If they came down the side of the house, that’s the nearest point.’

  Burbage took a few steps forward, directing the torch beam at the point Annie had indicated. ‘Jesus.’

  ‘What is it?’

  Burbage hesitated. ‘I was going to tell you not to look, but I’m guessing you’ve seen it all before.’

  Annie moved to stand beside Burbage, Wharton close behind her. As they saw the object caught in Burbage’s torchlight, she heard Wharton utter an expletive behind her.

  ‘I’ve definitely seen it all before,’ Annie said to Burbage, keeping her voice steady. ‘But I’ve seen this all too recently.’

  It was another body.

  The same type of victim, a young white male left naked among the trees. The same slitting of the throat. The same neat incisions made across the skinny chest. Another offering, she thought. This time, though, she knew very well who the victim was. She’d seen and spoken to him just the previous day.

  Jonny Garfield.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  ‘You think it’s the same?’ Stuart Jennings said.

  ‘It’s looks identical to me, except he wasn’t killed on site, presumably because they didn’t want to risk waking us. Danny Eccles and his team are in there now.’ Annie gestured towards the crime-scene tent that had been erected in their garden. ‘But as far as I could tell it looked to be exactly the same MO. Naked white male. Throat cut. Incisions on the chest.’

  ‘But this time in your garden.’

  ‘Tell me about it. Takes a lot to knock Sheena back, but this has done it.’ Annie wasn’t ready to admit to Jennings that she too was shaken, though he could probably guess. ‘The trouble is, we’ve always seen this place as our shelter from the world. Sheena, especially. It’s where she comes to get away from the crap of Parliament and the stuff she has to deal with in the constituency. She’d never put it that way but it’s a world away from how she grew up, and it means a lot to her. The stuff with the email and the camera was bad enough, but this…’

  Andy Dwyer had been talking to one of his team and now walked over to join them, catching the tail end of the conversation. ‘She struck me as the resilient type when I spoke to her yesterday. I was surprised by how unfazed she was. But this is a whole other thing.’ He paused. ‘Apart from anything else, I don’t know if we can assume she’s safe here. The security’s tight and I know you’re looking to make it tighter still, but if this place has been targeted it might be better to get her away somewhere where she’s less conspicuous.’

  Annie nodded. ‘I’ll talk to her. No idea where she’d go, though. I know Sheena. She wouldn’t want to be seen to be running away. She’ll want to stay in the area. I wondered about speaking to some of the local party members or constituency staff, but I think it would be difficult to keep under wraps. She’s a public figure, particularly round here. It won’t be easy.’

  Jennings had been peering around them, as if expecting that the garden itself might give them some answers. ‘I can’t get my head around this. We’ve been working on the assumption that we had two cases, but this suggests we may only have one. It’s too much of a coincidence otherwise. Why the hell else would anyone place a body here? Apart from anything else, it’s a hell of a risk given we’re already keeping an eye on the place.’

  ‘Maybe not if you’re aware how limited our resources are,’ Dwyer observed. ‘But I take your point. What do these killings have to do with Ms Pearson? And how are they connected, if they are, to the attempts on her own life?’

  ‘Search me,’ Annie said. ‘But how do we know this is about Sheena? I was the one who interviewed Garfield. Maybe it’s some kind of warning to me.’

  ‘Again, it seems a hell of a coincidence,’ Dwyer said. ‘You’ve already had an intruder planting a camera in the garden, sending threats to Ms Pearson. Then you get another intruder who dumps a body as a warning to you? Either you’re the world’s unluckiest couple, or there’s something more behind this.’

  Annie nodded, considering the implications of what Dwyer was saying. ‘I knew Garfield was scared. I knew he was afraid of someone from the moment Zoe and I met him. He clammed up because he was more afraid of them, whoever they are, than he was of us.’

  ‘Looks like his judgement was sound on that, anyway,’ Dwyer commented.

  ‘I shouldn’t have just left him, though. We were getting nowhere, but I thought he’d be more likely to talk if we let him stew for a few days. Turns out the poor bugger didn’t have a few days. I should have pushed him harder.’

  ‘You can’t blame yourself for that.’ Despite his words Annie could detect a faint note of smugness in Dwyer’s tone. If he was as ambitious as everyone said, he’d be happy to chalk this up as another instance of a potential competitor screwing up. ‘You couldn’t have predicted this.’

  She wanted to tell him to bugger off, that she wasn’t interested in defending herself. ‘Who knows? If he was scared enough…’

  ‘Andy’s right, though,’ Jennings said. ‘He clearly had good reason to be scared. My guess is that he’d never have talked to you unless we’d somehow been able to guarantee the threat would be removed. There’s nothing else you could have done.’

  ‘I could have tried,’ she said.

  Jennings was clearly keen to move the conversation on. ‘So we know now that two of the victims, Darren Parkin and Jonny Garfield, knew each other
. That should start to close the net a little. We presumably still don’t have an identity for the second victim found at the farm.’

  ‘Not yet,’ Annie said. ‘This might make it easier, though, if we start from the assumption the third victim also knew Parkin or Garfield.’

  ‘There’s one other thing about Garfield,’ Dwyer said. ‘I was just checking with one of the team because I thought the name rang a bell. He’s one of the names who’s come up in connection with that mob outside the constituency office. We’ve managed to ID a few of them, one way or another. It was one of the calls that came in when they showed the CCTV footage on TV, so we were due to follow it up today. Bit of a different context now.’

  ‘You know who identified him?’

  ‘Not offhand. We had a lot of calls, and not everyone was prepared to give their name. I’ll check.’

  ‘We’ll have to break the news to Garfield’s dad, too. Maybe he’ll be a bit more forthcoming now. Had the sense he was hiding something as well.’ She turned to Jennings. ‘How do you want us to handle this, Stuart? We still don’t know for sure that the two enquiries are linked. If Garfield’s body was dumped here as a warning to me rather than Sheena, maybe the apparent links to her are nothing more than coincidental after all.’

  Jennings frowned, clearly uncomfortable with being forced to make the judgement call. ‘I think for the moment we continue to treat them as two investigations. I don’t want us to jump to conclusions and start seeing conspiracies where they don’t exist. But we’ve got to keep an open mind. As Andy says, if it’s a coincidence, it’s a big one, especially if Garfield was present when the first attempt was made on Sheena’s life.’ He paused. ‘The other question, Annie, particularly if there’s a possibility that the two enquiries might be converging, is whether you’re too close to all this.’

  Objectively, she knew he was right. If the two cases were linked, her relationship with Sheena should rightly preclude her involvement. At a more personal level, though, the question felt like an attack on her integrity or her capability. She took a breath before responding. ‘I take the point. But if we’re continuing to treat the enquiries as separate, I think I should continue with the murder investigation. If that seems to risk any possible conflict of interest or if the enquires do merge, we can review the situation then.’