Death on the Coast

1

Kegan waited outside the rough circle of stones until the moment was right. Faces, made hideous by red and black paint, stared at him through the swirling flames of the fire. He found Tana’s eyes, so black in her white face. It was time. The rock, cold in his hands, scraped at his palms as he lifted it high and smashed it down on the back of the man’s head. The crack of stone on bone was loud enough to make one of them flinch, but they held firm, watching intently as Kegan hauled the unconscious man into his arms, before rising – each taking a limb of the inert body – and throwing it messily into the heart of the fire.

PC Gareth Evans warmed his hands. Above his head, stars filled the black sky, competing with the rising smoke and the dying flames below. ‘Looks like kids started it,’ he said.

His partner scanned the area close to the fire with her torch. There were many footprints in the sand, crossing over each other, wandering off at a tangent, obliterating useful evidence. She tutted and rolled away an empty beer can with her toe. ‘Hmm …’ Six boulders had been pulled into a rough circle, and behind them lay a tideline of empty cans and discarded food wrappers. ‘Looks like it was quite a party,’ she murmured.

‘I’m surprised anyone bothered calling it in at five in the morning. Nobody lives near this end of the beach.’ PC Evans stepped closer to the fire and stared into its yellow heart. It would burn itself out soon enough once the tide came in, no need to alert the fire brigade. ‘Halloween party, probably. Nothing better to do with their time, eh?’ It would only get busier as bonfire night approached. There were just too many students in Exmouth to keep an eye on them all. ‘I hate students,’ he said.

PC Tracy Mulligan stood at the far side of the fire, boots lapped by the sea, peering into the flames. One of the larger branches shifted and dropped as it was consumed in a quick, orange flare. ‘What the …’ Tracy grabbed a long piece of driftwood in both hands and rammed it into the centre of the fire, poking and pushing one burning log, then another, out onto the sand. ‘Gareth,’ she said, ‘you better come round here and look at this.’

The body fell forward out of the inferno: its mouth a gaping hole, hands clawed against its chest. Tracy turned horrified eyes up to meet Gareth's. ‘Oh my good God,’ she said.

‘Right,’ said Evans, his florid face paling. ‘Stand back, Trace. You start to secure the scene and I’ll call the station. This is more than just a fire.’

DCI Dan Hellier perched on a rock and glared at the waves lapping the shore. How the hell were they supposed to maintain a crime scene when the tide came in twice a day? He sipped from a takeaway coffee and watched the gentle wash of the tide. Of course, it could be a clever ploy to avoid detection, or just a party that got out of hand. And if the body turned out to be a drunk who’d fallen into the fire in the middle of a Halloween party, he'd be even more annoyed.

The forensics team stood listlessly on the promenade, chatting to Sergeants Bill Larcombe and Ben Bennett. They were waiting to process the scene but there wasn’t a lot they could do until the tide had gone out again. They’d lifted the body, but that was all.

Hellier almost felt guilty about being there, as there was a mountain of stuff he could have been doing, but sod it, they could manage without him in the office for an hour or two. He took another swig of coffee and gasped as it burnt its way down his oesophagus. At least they’d had time to retrieve the body before the tide took it; what was left of it. He hated fires.

‘DCI Hellier?’ Campbell Fox, the pathologist, yelled, and waved a beefy hand in his direction. Dan heaved himself up, every muscle complaining from the forty-mile bike ride he’d completed the day before. He’d allowed himself to get out of shape over the summer, and that had to stop. No way was he going to become some desk-bound wally, old before his time and shuffling paper, DCI or not. He jogged across sand and flat rocks towards the promenade, where a make-shift crime scene separated the police from the general public behind crime scene tape and a tent.

Fox beckoned him again, impatience in every gesture. Dan put a spurt on. He couldn’t quite get used to being DCI Hellier. It felt like someone else. The interview process had nearly seen him off, too. But, there it was, and here he was, jumping over boulders on Exmouth beach.

‘Enjoying the view, are we?’ asked Fox as Dan stepped up beside him. ‘You won’t be in a minute.’ The body was lying in a bag on a stretcher, ready for transporting to the hospital path lab. ‘I thought you might like a wee peek, before I take him away.’ He unzipped the bag and exposed a body, half-consumed by fire, settled in a stance like a boxer about to fight, arms curled into fists.

Dan took a shallow breath, covered the lower half of his face with his jacket sleeve, and put his cup down on the concrete. ‘Oh, that is horrible. Burns victims are the worst.’

‘Aye, they are. Luckily this one was rescued before the fire completed its work, so there should be identifying marks that we can use. Unlike on our Bog Bodies case, eh?’ He scratched his beard through his mask. ‘On first look, he’s clearly male. There is a small amount of head and facial hair on the skull. The skull has a massive fracture at the rear, on the occipital bone, which may indicate that he was dead, or at least unconscious, before he went into the fire. I've alerted the coroner.’

‘Right, it looks like we need the murder investigation team after all. Okay, thanks. Let me know when the post-mortem will be.’

Dan went back to his perch on the rock. Dead before he was burnt on the fire? At least unconscious? Could kids having a Halloween party really have burnt a man to death? He glanced at the two evidence bags full of the rubbish that had littered the site. It had been collected up by the two PCs on duty, and Dan made a note to thank them for their quick thinking in beating the tide. It certainly looked like it had been a bit of a party: beer cans, takeaway boxes, the black ends of joints. If one of the partygoers had fallen into the fire, would the others have left him to burn? Not if it was an accident they wouldn’t.

He slid off the rock and walked back to the promenade and the scientists standing by. Bill Larcombe would be fine on his own as crime scene manager, and it would be another couple of hours before forensics could get in to examine the fire in more detail. ‘Bill,’ he said, ‘we’ll set up back at the station. It seems pointless having the primary site here. Come back as soon as you’ve cleared the scene.’

Larcombe nodded. ‘Looks like murder then, boss?’

‘Or manslaughter. Whichever, I don’t think a bloke with a massive hole in the back of his head jumped into that fire, Bill.’

2

Tana sat cross-legged in the middle of the bed with her eyes closed and her hands at rest in her lap. Around the room, the others rested on the floor, propped against the wall.

Jay sneaked a look at his phone. It was almost 7.30 am. Light showed through a crack in the curtains. He would have to get going or he would be late for college, and he didn’t want to attract anyone’s attention today. He shook Scarlett’s hand to check she was awake. She looked bombed out. Dark hollows under her eyes, mascara tracking down her face in black streaks. ‘Come on,’ he whispered, ‘gotta go.’ He nudged Amber, who looked as if she’d dropped off to sleep.

Tana’s eyes flickered open. She stared at Jay, as if from a place far away.

‘Err … we have to go now, Tana,’ he said, pulling Scarlett and Amber to their feet.

‘No problem. You were brilliant.’ Tana tugged on Amber’s hand. ‘I’ll see you all tonight and we’ll talk.’

In the small bathroom near the front door, Jay scrubbed at his face and hands with soap and water to remove the dirt from the fire and the make-up Tana had made them wear. No problem? That’s what she thought? The face he saw in the mirror was not the person he had looked at the night before, where the world was a shitty place, yeah, but where the charge of murder could not be added to his list of sins. Squeezed in next to him, Scarlett washed herself, digging in her shoulder bag for a clean top. They hadn’t said more than a couple of words.

He grabbed his guitar from the living room, shrugged on his overcoat and opened the door. Amber was waiting outside for them, leaning against the railing. He could see that her head was far, far away. Far away from normal. Things had changed for all of them now, a step had been taken, and soon the dam they had built around them would break. It was bound to.

As soon as the front door had slammed shut on the last one, Tana rose from her bed and stretched. ‘What a night. It was amazing, wasn’t it?’ She tore off her smoke-stained clothes and stood naked before Kegan. ‘I’m starving. Do you want to make us a coffee?’ Before he could answer, she jumped in. ‘No. I know, a quick shower then down to Costa for brekkie.’ She grinned at him and headed for the bathroom.

Kegan swallowed. Tana’s body, laced as it was in the lattice of burn marks and silver scars she had gathered over the years, was both exotic and repulsive. He knew his body would soon look the same if he stayed with her. He held his right forearm up and examined the weeping burns. Weird how there was no pain when they were all in the grip of the fire, but it burned like hell the next day. He fumbled in his rucksack and found the gauze to wrap his arm, pulling on the ends of the cloth with his teeth to tighten the knots a little. ‘Always be prepared’ was more than just a motto since he’d been with her.

He was in it deep with Tana. Deep in the grip of the Irish witch. Again, he tasted the burning and the flesh and the flames on his tongue and shuddered deep in his groin. Deep. She had him, and she knew she had him. It was a wild ride with Tana.

He picked up her clothes from the floor and threw them into the laundry bin. Christ, it had been scary at the start: luring that disgusting old tramp to the beach, filling him with cheap cider, and then … His brain refused to conjure up the image for him. It was there in his head, but lurking under a blanket of horror. Even when he thought really hard, all he could remember was the sickening crunch of the old guy’s skull cracking.

The sound of Tana’s thin voice came from the shower. She was singing a song like nothing momentous had happened. Kegan shook his head and dug out fresh clothes from his rucksack. ‘Hurry up, Tana,’ he yelled through the door, ‘I need a shower too.’ He had to get to work, though how he was going to get through the next eight hours until they were able to sit down and talk it all through, he had no idea. He didn’t even think he could go to work. Better to walk away.

They had done it. Taken the step. Kegan knew he would dare more with Tana – go further than he had with anyone else. He just wished he didn’t feel so frightened.

He sank back down on the bed and thought about what would happen next. The laptop was charging in the corner of the room, a small white light throbbing like the pulse in a grey neck. If she posted the pictures she’d taken last night, on her site, nothing would ever be the same again.

3

Detective Sergeant Sally Ellis stood in front of the mirror in the ladies’, tugging at the hem of her shirt. It was no good, she was fat. Fat, fat, fat. She couldn’t fasten the button at the side of her skirt, and she had to wear her blouse on the outside, and that made her feel scruffy. And fat. I’ve no excuse , she told herself, too many doughnuts have caused this, and I’ve only myself to blame . She sighed, and tugged a brush through her blonde curls, which bounced back into exactly the same position. She stared at her reflection. It had hurt, really hurt, when she’d heard the younger members of the team wondering if she was pregnant again. After all the effort and IVF it had taken last time, that would have been a miracle. Instead, it was just humiliating. But that throwaway comment was the spur she’d needed. ‘No, madam, you are going on a diet.’ She winked at herself. ‘And if I’m suffering, so is every bugger else.’

Sally had arrived at work that morning to find a voicemail from Bill Larcombe, telling her to set up the major incident room and move Team Two into it ready for when the boss arrived. She had no idea what Dan was doing down at the beach, apart from sticking his nose into everyone’s business. He should have been able to trust them to get on with it by now. He had too many responsibilities to go gadding about after every major incident. Perhaps she should tell him.

She opened the MI room door and found a satisfying babble as desks were allocated and people began to collate information about the new case as it was called in. Sally tacked a map of Exmouth onto the board, cleaned the rest of it, added Dan’s name to the top of it, and recharged the coffee maker. She sent young Adam Foster out for milk and refused to acknowledge the questioning looks when she didn’t order doughnuts. This would be tough, but good for them, as she was sure they would all come to understand.

Dan held the first briefing just after 9am. The team gathered in their usual places and he perched on his – on the corner of the table. ‘We have a male Caucasian, major trauma to the back of the head and severe burning to most of the body. Found by PCs Gareth Evans and Tracy Mulligan at approximately half past five this morning on Exmouth beach.’

‘Which bit of the beach, sir?’ asked DC Adam Foster, his throat injury adding a darker, rougher edge to his voice.

‘Between the end of the main promenade and Orcombe Point. Just around the corner.’

‘It might mean that the perpetrators are local, sir. They’d have had to know the tide times to avoid being washed away, wouldn’t they?’

‘Good thinking, Adam. Sam, what time was high tide last night?’

DC Sam Knowles tapped into his computer. ‘Just give me a sec … High tide was at seventeen-eighteen yesterday, sir.’

‘Right, if you set the fire at, say, ten pm, the tide would have gone out far enough to expose that strip of sand for the next eight or so hours.’

‘Plenty of time to start a really good fire,’ agreed Sam. ‘And have the evidence destroyed by the returning tide the next morning.’

‘A Halloween party that got out of hand?’ asked DC Lizzie Singh. ‘Someone had too much to drink and fell into the fire?’

‘That’s a possibility. But if it’s one of your mates, and he’s drunk and he falls in the fire, why don’t you pull him out and ring for an ambulance?’

Lizzie frowned. ‘Maybe because you’re all too drunk to notice?’

‘Or,’ added Sally, ‘you did try but weren’t able to get him out, so you ran for it.’ She made a note in her book. ‘Which might make it worth checking out the local hospital for any burns sufferers. So, student party gone wrong, or murder most foul?’

‘That is the question, but the answer is definitely going to be murder: he had a cracked skull.’ Dan tapped the back of his head to indicate the area of the wound. ‘He was at least unconscious before he went into the fire.’ He gave them a few minutes to think. He’d been mulling over the event on his drive back from Exmouth.

‘Sam, see if there is any CCTV in that vicinity that we could have a look at. As far as I know, Exmouth town centre is crawling with it for the Saturday night party crowd.’ He stared at the incident board for a moment. ‘As soon as we have the post-mortem results, we should be able to get some DNA matching on the victim. There was a bit of skin on the arms and some hair still left on the body. And PC Evans collected a couple of bags of party rubbish from the site that might yield up something useful.’

‘The only trouble with DNA evidence, of course, is if the victim doesn’t have a criminal record, he won’t be on the database,’ said Sally.

‘True enough, but cheer up, we’re only on day one. Okay, Sergeant Bennett, please organise a trawl of the pubs of Exmouth, there may have been a group of people getting themselves psyched up, ready for an exciting night ahead.’

Bennett made a note. ‘I guess there’s no point doing house-to-house,’ he said, ‘as no one lives close enough to see what was happening.’

‘No, but there may have been other people out, early shift workers or late-night revellers, that you may catch on CCTV. Could be worth a follow-up.’ He tapped his teeth with his pen. ‘Not much to go on, I know, but you’ve all got actions to get on with. I’ll see you later.’

Dan wandered down the corridor to his new office and ducked inside before anybody stopped him. He glanced at the in-tray, shrugged, and leaned on the window ledge to watch people going about their day. It made a change from staring at an old bit of Sellotape on the wall of his previous office. It was an odd case, this one. If it was deliberate, it was unheard of in Devon – as far as he knew. You did have to discount the witch trials in the past, he supposed. Of course, it could still turn out to be an accident that nobody had called in, but that just didn't seem right. The cracked skull. The rubbish in those sacks was from stuff young people ate, not old alkies keeping warm on a cold night. Was the date, Halloween, important, or just a coincidence?

Pulling his laptop closer, he sent an email asking Superintendent Oliver if she had any input for the first press statement, and prepared a new logbook for the case.

4

Dan looked out over a sea of faces in the large public room at HQ. Four o’clock on a cold Monday afternoon but the place was steaming. He recognised many from the local press and TV. But the case was macabre enough to attract the nationals too. Not that he had much to tell them yet. He glanced down at his notebook, cleared his throat and waited until the chatter died down.

‘Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. This will be a brief meeting as, you will understand, we have only just begun our investigations into the case.’

‘Murder or accident, DCI Hellier?’ came the nasal voice of reporter Lisa Middleton from three rows back. ‘Shall we get to the point?’

‘If you’ll allow me to give my report, Miss Middleton, I’ll make time for questions at the end.’ Dan didn’t smile at her. He was beginning to see why Sally didn’t like her: pushy. ‘So, Devon and Cornwall Police was alerted at just after five this morning to a fire on Exmouth beach by a member of the public, and shortly afterwards officers sent to the scene discovered a body in the embers of that fire. Currently we have no idea who the deceased may be. I will know more after the post-mortem tomorrow.’

He looked directly into the TV camera that was facing him. ‘I would like to ask the person who made the phone call, or anybody else who saw anything to do with the incident, to come into Exeter Road police station, or contact us via the numbers on the bottom of your screens.’

He nodded back at Lisa Middleton. ‘To answer your question, we cannot tell whether this is a suspicious death or a terrible accident until after the post-mortem. Please don’t go away and speculate. You will know more tomorrow, and I’d rather you printed the facts.

‘Any more questions?’

‘So, was it a teenagers’ Halloween party gone wrong?’

‘I can only repeat myself, Miss Middleton, I will know more tomorrow. Thank you. You will be informed via the usual channels of any further information as soon as possible. Otherwise, please wait until the next press conference is called.’ He got up, removed his tie-clip microphone, and stood next to Chief Superintendent Oliver as the press filed out.

‘Well, you handled that a bit better than your first one,’ she said with a faint smile.

‘Not so scared now,’ he said. ‘But if Middleton runs with a teenagers’ party goes wrong story in tonight’s edition, I won’t be happy.’

‘It’s our best guess, though, isn’t it?’

‘Mmm.’ He stuffed his hands in his pockets and took himself back to the station and up to the MI room. His stomach growled, it had been a long time since breakfast.

Once inside, Dan made himself a fresh coffee and searched in vain for something to eat. ‘Where are the doughnuts?’ he complained.

Sally marched across to the drinks corner. ‘There’s a new regime,’ she said. ‘Cakes only on birthdays.’ She opened a cupboard, rummaged about in a carrier bag, and said, ‘Here, have a pack of these if you’re hungry.’ She threw him a tiny pack of nuts and raisins.

Dan caught them and stared at her. ‘What's brought this on, Sal?’

She tutted and went back to her computer station, muttering, ‘As if you didn’t know. As if it’s not blindingly obvious. As if you’re not all gabbing on about me behind my back as it is. This,’ she said, slapping herself on the bottom, ‘and this,’ poking herself in the stomach, ‘have got to go. And if I’m on a diet, so are you lot. Sir,’ she added.

‘Right, that’s me told,’ said Dan, running his tongue around the inside of his mouth. ‘Glad I asked. It’s good we’ve got that all cleared up then.’ He opened the little bag with his teeth and emptied the contents in one mouthful. He chewed for a minute or two, and tried not to smile at the expectant faces peering up at him from their computer screens. ‘Trainee DC Foster?’

Foster leapt to his feet and grabbed his coat. ‘Yes, sir. What can I get you?’

Dan looked at Foster, aged twenty-eight and thin as a whippet, and then at Sally, aged considerably more and resembling a purple duvet in her tight suit, and decided he didn’t want the fight. He took a fiver from his wallet. ‘Just get me a prawn sandwich, please, and some more milk for coffee corner.’

Foster couldn't hide his disappointment as he slunk through the door.

‘DS Ellis is right, you lot,’ he said. ‘We need to be fit to do our jobs, so healthy food only from now on in the MI room.’ He picked up his coffee and headed for the door. ‘Of course, what I eat in my office, is entirely up to me …’

Sally interrupted Dan as he was engrossed in checking the evidence folder for the Team One robbery case. He felt sick to his stomach every time he found an error in the paperwork or a lack of proper supporting evidence. Jim Waite led the team well but was not good with detail. He frowned up at her. There was no way the first court case with him in charge was going to collapse from poor evidence presentation. No way.

‘Sorry, boss, know you’re busy. PM’s at eight tomorrow morning. Fox is cramming it in before that hit and run victim. He thinks it will be straightforward.’

‘Right, I’ll be there, thanks.’ Dan made a note of the time. ‘We might have something to go on once that’s done and the flowerpot men have examined the evidence properly.’

‘Bill is back at the station. They’ve closed down the crime scene at the beach – as you suggested. He’s left a PCSO there to talk to any passers-by. He and Ben have got both sacks spread out on the tables in the evidence room. Why don’t you pop down and have a look?’

The evidence room was long and