The phones were protected by either a PIN or a fingerprint. Without Craig Armitage, they’d be useless.
***
Hillsborough Park was virtually empty. The storm last night had left the ground saturated and only the hardiest of joggers and dog walkers had decided to come out.
Leslie Cox was on the wrong side of sixty. A recent heart scare had forced her to re-evaluate her lifestyle. She’d ditched the chips, the chocolate, the crisps and the fried food and adopted a vegetarian diet. She went swimming twice a week, had joined a walking club which met twice a month and at the weekends she went for a light jog in the park near her home. In the last six months she’d lost three stone in weight and had never felt healthier. With Bonnie Tyler singing loudly in her ears, she set off at a brisk pace, focussing on her breathing. She ran past the playground, turned right at the pond and felt the coolness of the air as she ran under the oaks and the birches and out of the sunlight. She looked up, saw a man hanging from a tree, and screamed so loudly she scared the birds from the trees.
Chapter 61
Matilda stood back from the hive of activity and watched as Craig Armitage was cut down. She had been hoping he would have turned up somewhere and confessed, chapter and verse, to abusing his daughters. At the back of her mind, she always knew it would end like this. Abusers were cowards; they targeted the vulnerable members of society to exert power over them, but when faced with the responsibility of their actions, they took the easy way out. Craig wouldn’t have coped in prison, especially when it was revealed he had raped two of his three children. She wondered what had gone through his mind as he tied a rope around his neck and jumped from the branch. Matilda blinked. She realised she didn’t care what he’d been thinking. His actions had led to his daughter killing her mother, little sister, and brother. He had destroyed his whole family.
‘Are you all right?’ Adele asked, walking towards her and pulling her gloves off.
‘Not really.’
‘You wanted him alive, didn’t you?’
‘I want all of them alive. People should face justice for their actions. He should have rotted in prison for the rest of his life. I suppose it’s too much to ask that there’s a note in his pocket admitting everything.’
‘We haven’t found anything. If it’s any comfort, it wasn’t a quick death. There’s no broken hyoid bone. His fingernails are torn and there are scratches around the neck. He’ll have strangled himself and every instinct in his body would have been telling him to get the rope off, but he couldn’t.’
‘It might be a comfort to me, but what about poor Keeley and Riley?’ she asked, turning and walking away.
Adele followed. ‘We’ve sent samples from Linda Armitage off to be tested – blood and stomach contents. They’ll take a couple of weeks to come back.’
‘Your new gadget worked?’
‘Of course,’ she said with a hint of a smile. ‘Riley died from asphyxiation. There was a piece of food lodged in his throat.’
‘Accidental?’
‘I don’t know. Was he able to feed himself?’
‘No.’
‘Then I doubt it. Whoever fed him will have known how mashed up his food needed to be. On its own it could have looked like an accident, but when you take everything else into account, it was obviously murder. A clumsy attempt at a natural death.’
Matilda shook her head. ‘What threat did Riley pose, for crying out loud? He was four years old and severely disabled. Even if he had witnessed something he wouldn’t have been able to tell anyone. Why the fuck did he have to die?’ She turned and walked away, her heavy shoes squelching on the sodden ground.
‘Are you sure you’re all right?’ Adele asked, following and placing a hand on Matilda’s shoulder.
‘I don’t know.’
‘You shouldn’t have come in today.’
‘I need to see this through.’
‘You are not to blame for any of this. You were never going to find Keeley alive.’
‘I know. It’s just …’
‘Carl Meagan?’
Matilda nodded. ‘I’m haunted by him every single day,’ she said, choking on her tears.
Adele pulled Matilda into an embrace and held her tight while the DCI cried on her shoulder. For the first time since returning to work following the death of her husband, she didn’t care if anyone saw her crying.
Chapter 62
Scott Andrews tentatively pushed open the doors to the mortuary and stepped inside. He felt the chill straight away and shuddered. It wasn’t the cold; it was the thought of all those dead bodies stacked up in the fridges. He couldn’t understand how someone as warm, kind and funny as Adele could spend her working days elbow deep in organs and stomach contents.
He walked slowly down the corridor. There was nobody about and he was hoping he’d had a wasted journey and would have to return to the station with his task incomplete.
‘Jesus, you scared the life out of me,’ Lucy Dauman said as she entered the corridor from a side room. She tucked her blonde hair behind her ear.
‘Sorry Lucy. Is Adele around?’
‘Yes. She’s just washing up. Anything wrong?’
‘No. Why?’
‘You’ve got the look of someone who’s been caught with their hand in the till.’
‘Oh. I’m fine.’
‘Ok,’ she smiled.
Adele smelled of soap and perfume. She was sitting at her desk peeling a satsuma and leaning in close to her computer screen, reading intently. She caught something moving out of the corner of her eyes and looked up.
‘Hello Scott. Have you come to ask for my son’s hand in marriage?’
‘Marriage?’ he asked, startled. His eyes widened. He even took a step back. ‘No. No. Nothing like that. No.’
‘Calm down, Scott, I’m only teasing,’ she smiled. ‘What can I do for you?’
‘I’m afraid I need your help with Craig Armitage.’
The only way to unlock the three phones found beneath the living room floor was by using his fingerprint on the home button. Unfortunately, as Craig was dead, his fingers would need bringing up to body temperature in order for them to work to unlock the phone.
Craig was wheeled out of the fridge and Adele handed Scott a pair of latex gloves.
He stood holding all three phones in his shaking hands.
‘You want me to do it?’
‘You’re the one who wants the phones unlocked,’ Adele grinned.
‘What do I do?’
‘You take his finger, wrap your hand around it, and wait until it warms up,’ she said in a mock tone as if talking to a five-year-old.
‘Which finger?’ he asked, glaring down at the blue hand with a look of revulsion on his pale face.
‘I don’t know. Shall we ask him?’
‘You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?’
‘Just a tad.’
‘You’re a ghoul, do you know that?’
‘Oh yes,’ she smiled. ‘Well, come on, get on with it. Craig Armitage might not have anything else to do today, but I certainly have.’
Scott hated dead bodies. He hated gruesome crime scenes and he would sell his own mother to get out of attending a post-mortem. He swallowed hard, took a deep breath and stepped forward. He put two of the phones on the side of the trolley, held one in his hand, and wrapped his other hand around Craig’s solid cold thumb.