Cobweb Read online

  Contents

  Cover

  Recent titles by Margaret Duffy from Severn House

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Epitaph

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Recent titles by Margaret Duffy from Severn House

  TAINTED GROUND

  COBWEB

  BLOOD SUBSTITUTE

  SOUVENIRS OF MURDER

  CORPSE IN WAITING

  RAT POISON

  STEALTH

  DARK SIDE

  ASHES TO ASHES

  COBWEB

  Margaret Duffy

  This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  First published in 2007 in Great Britain and the USA by

  SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD of

  19 Cedar Road, Sutton, Surrey, England, SM2 5DA.

  This eBook edition first published in 2015 by Severn House Digital

  an imprint of Severn House Publishers Limited

  Copyright © 2007 by Margaret Duffy.

  The right of Margaret Duffy to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988.

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

  Duffy, Margaret

  Cobweb

  1. Gillard, Patrick (Fictitious character) – Fiction

  2. Langley, Ingrid (Fictitious character) – Fiction

  3. Murder – Investigation – Fiction 4. Detective and

  mystery stories

  I. Title

  823.9'14[F]

  ISBN-13: 978-0-7278-6539-7 (cased)

  ISBN-13: 978-1-78010-688-5 (ePUB)

  Except where actual historical events and characters are being described for the storyline of this novel, all situations in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to living persons is purely coincidental.

  This ebook produced by

  Palimpsest Book Production Limited,

  Falkirk, Stirlingshire, Scotland.

  Epitaph

  If DCI Derek Harmsworth could have known that, in a couple of months’ time, he himself would be the subject of an exhumation order, he might have handled things a little differently. As it was, he let himself out of his home on that Sunday morning leaving his wife Vera – she of the baggy cardigans and slightly wobbly dentures – asleep in bed.

  There had been a heavy dew and Harmsworth swore under his breath as the overgrown privet hedge that bordered the path unloaded what seemed to be a pint of water down the sleeve of his jacket as he brushed against it. Not for the first time he told himself that the hedge would have to be trimmed. Or grubbed out. That would sort the bloody thing, he thought balefully. Harmsworth hated gardening.

  He did not mind working at weekends – hell, he’d done enough of it in his time – and was bearing firmly in mind that his retirement loomed ever closer. Not long now, just another four months. He was aware that as far as this date was concerned he was a bit like a sailing ship of old journeying towards the horizon, the crew having no idea what might happen when they actually arrived. He had made no plans, he never seemed to have the time or energy to sit down and think it through. A little bungalow in Seaford – Vera’s ambition? It gave him the cold shivers even to contemplate that kind of full stop to his life.

  No, no time. Just get in the car, drive to the nick and head the investigation into who, just over thirty-six hours previously, had jumped a Member of Parliament in an East End park, knifed him in amazing fashion and then cut his head off for good measure and tossed it into a nearby rubbish bin. Even Harmsworth, who thought he had seen everything and plumbed the depths of the criminal mind, had thrown up in the blood-spattered bushes.

  With the occurrence of such a serious crime Harmsworth would have worked on a Sunday anyway but now had the prospect of Special Branch breathing down his neck. Either that or a specialist unit headed up by one Commander John Brinkley. So far, though, no designer macs had materialized, not even at the briefing that had been held the previous day. Harmsworth was not sure whether this reflected the fact that the murder victim had been a low-profile back-bencher or had more to do with undermanning. He rather thought that Monday morning would be crunch time and there would be a ‘visitation’, as the Super, Fred Knightly, had put it, and had absolutely no intention of being caught on the hop.

  According to the pathologist, the deceased, Jason Giddings, had been drinking but could not have been described as drunk even though he would have been over the limit as far as driving was concerned. Seemingly, though, he had had no intention of driving, as his car had been left at home in the village of Beech Hanger on the edge of Epping Forest and the MP had gone to the city by taxi and train. Although having apparently been expected home fairly early that evening, as they were giving a dinner party, he had failed to appear and nothing had been heard of him until an off-duty policeman taking his dog for a walk – thank God children had not found the body, Harmsworth thought – had come across the remains.

  Predictably, media interest had been enormous, the police station at Woodhill Old Street having been inundated as soon as the news had broken. Giddings’s watch, wallet and credit cards had been missing but the wallet had been recovered from another litter bin several hundred yards away, minus the money but, unusually, still enclosing his credit cards and driving licence. So they had been able to put a name to the bloodbath almost immediately, which, Harmsworth supposed wearily, was something.

  The Super, not a man to be an awful lot of use for most of the time, did at least come in handy in a situation like this: he had a huge flair for dealing with press conferences and enjoyed being in the public eye, appearing, surreptitiously combing the last surviving strands of mousey hair across his balding pate, as soon as the cameras were rolled out. Harmsworth only had to make sure that he was properly briefed.

  As Harmsworth arrived there were a few reporters and the like hanging about outside the nick, which was a muddled complex of concrete and glass box-shaped buildings in various shades of dirty grey. He dodged the media by driving down a narrow side street, bumped across a slightly raised area with large plant tubs that, strictly speaking, was for pedestrians only, squeezed his small Ford between two bollards at the entrance to another lane that descended gently to the rear of terraced houses, ghosted down it and emerged through a gap in a chain-link fence at the far corner of the nick’s car park. Permitting himself a little smile of satisfaction, he parked and went in through one of the two rear entrances of the building.

  There did not seem to be many people around, not even in the canteen, where he quickly drank a cup of coffee – it didn’t do to savour the stuff – before making for his office. They were probably all out preparing to do house-to-house calls in the area surrounding the park with DI John Gray behind them cracking his whip. Younger than Harmsworth by at least fifteen years, he could
be hot-headed and impulsive but got the job done.

  The DCI met DS Erin Melrose on the staircase, which afforded him another small twinge of pleasure, as, unlike just about everyone else in the place, men and women, she was a delight to behold. This was not to say that he thought women ought to be mere objects of beauty, for although he was old-fashioned in some respects this was not one of them. In a drab, grey world Derek Harmsworth was always on the lookout for things that would gladden his heart, whether they were a sunset, birds in a park, sunlight shining through leaves – tiny moments that made up for some of the rest.

  DS Melrose had only just been promoted and was John Gray’s assistant. Gray had reservations about women in the job, in senior positions in particular, but even he had to admit that the girl worked hard and had a good head on her shoulders. She was also a vast improvement on his previous sergeant, a morose individual who had munched on an untidy moustache, probably the cause of his chronic indigestion. But Harmsworth, giving Erin a brief nod as they passed, was glad she did not work directly for him, as he would not have been able to tolerate literally looking up to her all day long – she was at least five feet ten inches tall in her silky black tights. And that mane of red hair made her stand out like a beacon. No hanging around trying to merge into the background watching local yobs with that one.

  Harmsworth had interviewed Honor Giddings, the murder victim’s wife – who, interestingly to him, was a forensic scientist by profession – the previous afternoon after giving her a few hours to recover from her appalling shock. He intended to talk to her again, and very soon, but first of all wanted to grill, at some length, her son by her first marriage, one Theodore du Norde, whom she had said was an interior designer. Mrs Giddings had been unable to conceal from Harmsworth that there had been tension between du Norde and his stepfather, especially since her husband had stopped paying an allowance to him. Reluctantly, and after he had persevered in questioning her along these lines, she had gone on to say that she had been worried about her son for some time on account of what she described, with a toss of her head, as ‘his rubbish friends’. The DCI had pricked up his ears at this for, in his experience, rubbish all tended to end up in the same pile.

  Harmsworth grumpily rummaged amongst the muddle on his desk for a pen that would write. It looked as though he would have to go and see Theodore du Norde, who had been in the north of England on business, on his own, DS Boles having gone home the previous day with a toothache. Boles, who at least could have driven the car, giving Harmsworth a chance to think, was not much more help than someone with toothache normally. Harmsworth could not but wonder if du Norde had had a hand in the killing and done a runner until things had died down a bit.

  Collecting the new case file from where a note on his desk in John Gray’s handwriting indicated that it had been left – down the corridor in Fred Knightly’s virginally tidy office – Harmsworth went out, reviewing what he knew already. It was understandable that a large part of the widow’s shock would have stemmed from the ghastly circumstances of her husband’s death, not least because the park was a well-known meeting place for homosexuals. But she had been adamant that he had never had any inclinations in that direction and could think of no reason why he should have gone there. The post mortem had not revealed evidence of sexual activity of any kind, so Harmsworth was nudging his thoughts in the direction of a killer half-crazed with drink and drugs – a mugging that had turned into butchery. That was if du Norde was proved to be in the clear. But what the hell had Giddings been doing in the park?

  Retracing his steps to his car – it was going to be another unseasonally roasting day despite the overnight thundery rain and the vehicle was still hot from the day before – Harmsworth removed his jacket, opened all the windows and sat still for a couple of minutes, deep in thought. No, first of all, he would go and take another look at the scene of the crime. He had turned the key in the ignition when he spotted DS Boles driving into the car park. When he had locked up and was about to walk in the direction of the building Harmsworth tooted his horn and got out of the car.

  There was no doubt about it: the man’s pallid, normally round face was now like a one-sided balloon.

  ‘I’m on painkillers and antibiotics, sir,’ was his response to the question.

  ‘They used to yank ’em out,’ Harmsworth observed. ‘Solves the problem straight away.’

  Boles winced. ‘It’s actually a gold crown – they do sometimes play up after a while.’ He dropped his gaze. ‘I know I drove here but I’m not really supposed to while I’m on these pills, sir.’

  Harmsworth sighed and got back behind the wheel.

  The park was not a large one – more like a recreation ground, about fifteen acres in size – and had the usual grassy open spaces, tennis courts, a bowling green and also a Victorian fountain, defunct, its basin full of litter, at the end of a short avenue of rather weary-looking lime trees. Near the bowling green, seemingly disused, the grass long, was a shrubbery with wide linking paths which curved between the planted areas, finally merging at a circular flower bed in the middle, from which most of the plants were missing. Police incident tape was still affixed to the metal railings that surrounded the planted areas, cordoning off one section.

  Harmsworth pulled up to the rear of a police van parked on one of the paths and got out. ‘This place still stinks of death,’ he muttered, ducking under the tape, Boles following on.

  It did, even after the rain, the tall laurels, hollies and viburnums preventing any breath of breeze cleansing the air. At some time during this day, when every search, test and examination had been completed, a team would be permitted to move in to eradicate all traces of violent crime. Harmsworth acknowledged with a brief wave the presence of a uniformed constable keeping an eye on things from the driving seat of the van, reckoning that quite a lot of soil would have to be removed as well as some of the smaller bushes.

  ‘The initial PM findings weren’t in before you left yesterday,’ he reminded Boles briskly. ‘And if we’re not talking about a psycho who’s been let out and hasn’t taken his pills, then it’s a maniac who should be inside and has taken far too many. Judson, the pathologist, couldn’t pinpoint which of the twenty or so stab wounds had been the cause of death but finally narrowed it down to five. He could not say whether he had been disembowelled before or after death. As you know, the guts were trailing from the body but that could mean that either Giddings was still alive and moved, or the body was shifted after he was dead. Or, of course, the killer pulled the innards out himself. Judson’s fairly convinced the head was cut off after Giddings was dead and that wasn’t the actual cause of death.’

  Boles nodded unhappily.

  ‘Before all that happened to him,’ Harmsworth continued, ‘Giddings was fairly healthy for a man of forty-five, but there were early signs of cirrhosis of the liver so we can assume he had a history of drinking too much. Goes with the job for some, perhaps. What we’ve got to find out is why he came here instead of going home for the dinner party.’

  They had reached their destination, a little dell with mangled vegetation and stained beaten earth. Above was a small tree of some kind. All was now protected from the elements by a special awning – a tent had been impractical in the circumstances. Although the forensic team had removed as much of the aftermath of violent murder as possible, even shovelling up bagsful of blood-soaked earth for testing, body fluids that had not escaped into the ground had dried to a dull brown colour. There were clouds of flies.

  Harmsworth was trying to banish from his memory the way the victim’s intestines had been draped over some low branches. ‘Any problems?’ he asked the constable, who had left the van and followed them.

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘Have SOCO finished?’

  ‘They were here early, sir. They’ve been gone about twenty minutes.’

  ‘They found nothing else interesting, I suppose?’ the DCI asked hopefully.

  ‘Nothing they told me
about, sir.’

  Harmsworth grinned. ‘Never mind, lad. You ought to know by now that Scenes of Crime officers were oysters in their previous lives.’

  The man did not smile.

  ‘It’s vital that we trace Giddings’s movements on Friday,’ Harmsworth said to Boles as they walked away a few minutes later. He wanted to discover, if possible, what course the murder victim might have taken on this last part of his journey to a meeting with death. Also, as was the DCI’s habit, he needed to get the feel of the place.

  They negotiated the tape and walked across the park heading east. ‘We’ve discovered that he was at the House of Commons in the morning and was seen on the terrace having coffee and a doughnut at around ten fifteen,’ Harmsworth went on. ‘He’d left his car at home and used public transport, which apparently wasn’t unusual. The PM revealed that he ate scampi and chips at around five hours before death, so was that a late lunch or an early tea?’

  ‘People like that usually have something like sandwiches and cake for tea,’ Boles pointed out in his somewhat lugubrious fashion.

  Harmsworth, originally from Birmingham, had never got used to southern habits. ‘But he’d got a long time to go, hadn’t he?– before he could have a decent bite to eat, I mean. There was a dinner party planned and likely as not he’d have had to wait until around eight thirty or nine that night. Well, I know that Vera and I don’t have folk around very often, but she’d kill me if I forgot all about it. What was Giddings up to? There wasn’t much alcohol in his blood, so he didn’t get half plastered and it slipped his mind. Had he and his wife had a row and he was paying her back by not turning up? She’s insisting he wasn’t homosexual, so what the hell was he doing coming here?’

  ‘Would she admit it if he had been?’ Boles offered.

  Harmsworth grunted, hearing church bells over the sound of traffic. He was not a religious man, but the contrast between that and what they had just seen and been talking about made the crime appear even more obscene.