MURDER IS SKIN DEEP by M.G. Cole (read dune .txt) 📕

Garrick had silenced the phone on entering the hospital and had missed the call from Chib. He dialled his voicemail as he recalled Fraser’s reaction.

“He just sort of went with it. He didn’t actually say…” He fell silent as he listened to the short message. Then he hung up and stared at the screen.

“I suppose if we have nothing to charge her with, she’s out tomorrow?” When Garrick didn’t answer, Harry turned to him and saw the shocked look on his face. “What’s happened?”

“They just found Huw Crawford.”

26

Huw Crawford’s body swung in the cold wind blowing from the North Sea, heralding the storm about to hit Whitstable. He was at the top of a thirty-foot tall metal tower that held a raft of weather monitoring devices. It was accessible by a steel-rung ladder, which is how Crawford had got all the way to the top, carrying a length of rope left amongst the building supplies between the popular seafood shacks. He’d fastened one end of the rope to the rungs, the other around his neck. Every so often the wind would pick up, causing the body to swing wide and clang Crawford’s Timberland boots against the mast. It was the very noise that had attracted a pair of diners to look up as they headed to their car.

If it wasn’t for the wind, the body could have gone unnoticed all night at the top of the mast, wreathed in darkness. By the time Garrick had arrived, the police at the scene had rigged a pair of spotlights to illuminate him.

Garrick’s first instinct was to cut him down, but that proved tricky. Simply slashing the rope would send the body crashing to the ground and destroy vital evidence. It was another two hours before the SOCO team arrived, just as the rain squall moved in. They eventually worked out a safe way of attaching another rope to hoist Crawford to the ground.

It was well after midnight when a uniformed officer knocked on the side window of Garrick’s Land Rover, causing him to jump. He’d been fending off sleep since he took refuge in his car while the forensics did their thing. The officer led him to the foot of the weather mast. A middle-aged SOCO pulled her rain poncho tighter. He recognised her from a few other past crime scenes, which was made easier with her Australian accent. She had to shout over the noise of the rain hammering the metal roofs of the diners and small warehouses around them.

“I can’t be sure, but I think he’s been dead for about three hours. If it wasn’t for the wind bashing him against the mast, I don’t think anybody would have found him until the morning.” She had to raise her voice as the rain pelted harder. It stung Garrick’s eyes every time he followed her finger up to the mast. His hair was plastered to his scalp. His legs were wet, feet soaked, and the water had trickled down the neck of his Barbour, drenching his shirt. “I think it’s odds-on-favourite it was a suicide. Getting a body way up there to fake it would be far too difficult.”

She crossed to a pallet filled with building materials and some junk. “I reckon he got the rope from here. So unless he specifically intended to come to this place, it wasn’t premeditated.”

This was the desperate act of a frightened man. The incident had been all over the news, so it was no secret that PC Lord had survived. He doubted it was the guilt of the hit-and-run that had led him to take his own life. They were only two miles from where Crawford had dumped the car, so he must have spent several hours hiding in Whitstable before making his fatal decision.

“What did he have on him?”

“Nothing. But we found this bag in one of the dumpsters.” She pointed to a line of wheel refuge bins that had all been tipped onto their sides so the team could examine their contents. She led him to the back of a forensic van. They both climbed inside, thankful to be out of the storm. The rain drummed the vehicle as she swapped her gloves for a pair of dry ones and then laid a leather satchel on a sheet on the floor. She carefully drew out a laptop, a medical textbook, and a mobile phone.

Garrick took a pair of latex gloves from a cardboard box and put them on. He opened the laptop. It woke from sleep, showing a password prompt.

“That’s going to be fun to hack,” sniffed the SOCO.

“Is the body still here?”

“In the Ambulance.”

Garrick braced himself as he hopped from the van and ran to the back of the ambulance into which the body had been loaded. He held up the phone so its camera could scan Huw Crawford’s face. It failed to unlock. Garrick tried again. It didn’t work. He’d tried a similar trick with Fanta in the past, and it had worked perfectly.

The SOCO caught up with him and clambered onboard.

“I don’t think this is his phone.”

“It probably has the attention feature switched on.” Garrick’s bewildered expression made her chuckle. “I wouldn’t have known about it if my daughter hadn’t slipped up and told me. So nobody can unlock your phone while you’re asleep, the software checks to see if you’re awake.”

She leaned across the body and used both hands to pry Crawford’s eyelids open. His bulging glassy eyes stared at an angle, but the pupils were just visible.

“Try it now.”

Garrick held up the camera and the screen unlocked. He went straight into the settings and turned the phone’s auto-lock off. It was another handy tip that Fanta had taught him. He checked the call log and saw twenty-three to the same number. A quick check on his own phone confirmed it was Terri Cordy’s mobile. Over the space of several hours, right until nine-sixteen, they had gone