O’Connor flicked through his notebook. ‘It’s a vicar, Sally Stevens.’
Gina made a note. ‘There’s also this road. I know it’s a back road, but to get the victim and the coffin to this location’ – she pointed – ‘our murderer or murderers would have wanted to park as closely as possible.’ She paced across the room and fixed her gaze on the squad cars parked up in the potholed car park below. A van to the one side caught her eye and a woman stepped out and began to talk into a microphone. Great, the press were about to make their job a whole lot harder. She turned back to the room. ‘Unless, the coffin was placed there beforehand and the victim was lured to this location. It’d be a struggle carrying a dead weight from this position to here.’ Back at the board, she traced a line with her finger from the road to the spot in question. ‘On the other hand, getting a coffin to this location would be tricky too. At the very least there would have to have been two people or one person using some sort of trolley. Wyre, can I task you with looking into how easy it would be to move a box the size of our coffin around? I’m hoping that we will have the weight and dimensions soon. I checked this morning and the crime scene crew are still there and it’s likely to be a long day. After the rainfall last night, they’re also buried up to their knees in mud. Oh, and to top it all off, the press have arrived and I’m sure they going to make a lot of a murder that involves the victim being potentially buried alive in the run up to Halloween.’
Wyre made a few notes. ‘I’ll get onto it, guv.’
‘Also, can you research all the funeral directors within a ten-mile radius, starting with Cleevesford and working outwards? This was a real coffin, not a box knocked together with any old wood – an actual all-singing, all-dancing, fully-lined coffin. Thinking about it, this would rule kids out. Coffins don’t come cheap.’ She paused. ‘I checked my emails this morning and there have been no manufacturer markings found on it yet. I want to know if anything like this has been stolen. O’Connor?’
‘Yes, guv.’ He shook the crumbs from his hands and swallowed the last of his croissant.
‘Continue with the door-to-doors. I know there was a lot of activity with kids hanging around everywhere last night and yesterday, but we need to keep at it. Someone must have seen something. The kids may have seen something. I could be convinced of a lot of things but one thing I’m totally convinced of is that this isn’t the work of a ghost. So someone, somewhere, will have seen something. Whether it’s a car pulling up at the side of the road or someone behaving suspiciously in the woods. When was the grave dug? Someone may have heard this happening or seen our perpetrator walking around with a shovel. Graves don’t just dig themselves, coffins aren’t easily transported into the middle of the woods and the same with bodies or people.’
O’Connor tapped his fingers on the table. ‘There are still a lot of houses to tackle and a fair few businesses.’
Gina leaned over the table and placed both hands flat on it. ‘Right, onto our victim. The basics of his description are in the file. The email that Bernard sent also confirmed that there was no identification on him. We haven’t found a phone on him either. That’s strange in itself. How many people do you really know who don’t carry a phone around with them? We literally have no idea who he is, but someone must be missing a relative. He wasn’t wearing a wedding ring but that might not mean much. He could have a partner or children; a mother, siblings, friends.’
Gina thought back to the café and remembered the smell that he brought with him when he entered from the roadside. In her mind he either lived rough or didn’t look after himself. She thought back to the fuss he made about the price of the sandwich and coffee. ‘As you know, on the night of the disturbance that DCI Briggs and I called in, we’d already seen this man in the café. He was giving the owner a bit of abuse. I do remember a slight smell of smoke coming from his clothes.’
Jacob leaned back in his chair and Briggs crept in and sat at the back of the room. Gina swallowed. There was a point at the café where she clearly remembered Briggs placing his hand over hers. She knew what was coming next.
‘We can see if the café has any interior CCTV. Maybe a screenshot of our victim could be circulated to the press. As you say, someone has to know him,’ Wyre said.
Gina nodded, her gaze shifting quickly from Briggs’s. ‘I’ll head over there next and see what they have. It won’t do any harm to talk to the owner, see if she remembers seeing him at any other time.’
‘Great.’ Jacob pulled his coat from the back of the chair, assuming she’d ask him to go.
It was a fair assumption. She’d tasked Wyre and O’Connor with door-to-door and undertaker research. Jacob was her usual right-hand detective. Briggs ran his thick fingers through his hair and straightened his tie before glancing at her again then quickly looking away. ‘Okay. Are we all clear about what we’re doing?’
A murmur of yesses filled the room and everyone turned to their notes and chatted about their plans. Gina watched as Briggs slinked off into the kitchen. She hurried out and closed the door, switching on the kettle and waiting until it began to boil. ‘We could be on those images.’ Gina bit her bottom lip and leaned over the worktop, allowing her tangled up hair to fall over her face.
‘I was thinking that too. We’ll just have to see what you come back with and hope we’re not on the footage.’ He paced towards the cupboard. ‘It wasn’t that bad, it was just a slight touch. It was nothing. I accidentally reached over to you out of concern when our victim came in and intimidated everyone in the café.’
‘You shouldn’t have.’
His shoulders slumped and he looked away.
Jacob burst through the door and the kettle clicked as steam bellowed from the spout. She forced a smile.
Jacob leaned over and threw a teabag into a travel mug. ‘One for the road. Am I missing something?’
‘No, we were just talking about the case. Nothing we haven’t covered.’ Briggs headed towards the door. ‘Come and see me later. We can continue our conversation then. In the meantime, I’ll prepare an update for the press. Reporters are all over the crime scene and now they’re beginning to camp on our car park. Anyway, with any luck, we’ll have a clear image that I can send to them when you get back. That should keep them off our backs for a short while and it might lead to our victim’s identity.’
Gina nodded. ‘Let’s hope something comes of it, then we can put a name to the face. I’m off to the café so see you later.’ Jacob filled his cup. ‘I’ll just grab my coat.’ As Jacob left, Gina exhaled and wiped the small droplets of sweat that had formed at her brow, knowing that this case could be the start of her undoing.
She hurried back to her office to get her coat and stopped as she caught sight of the letter again. Tearing it open, she began to read the words on the page. She leaned against her desk as the room began to swirl, her heart banging like she was about to have a heart attack. It was as if her breath had been sucked from her body.
Chapter Twelve