Cold Blood by Jane Heafield (great books to read txt) 📕

Court on Monday, charged with a number of Public Justice Offences, primarily perverting the course of justice and obstructing a coroner. Lucas Turner was still missing and, along with Crabtree, he would face additional charges relating to the physical act of disposing of dead bodies and destroying a crime scene.

Until then, the seven charged got police bail. The still-unanswered question of who killed four film-makers and a little girl was a hot topic and opinion was split on whether or not the charged were also murderers. Upon their release, a gaggle of reporters, supporters and wannabe-vigilantes was waiting outside. Crabtree and all but one of the Keys had already made arrangements to stay with friends and family outside Lampton, but hopes of a quiet weekend were dashed as their vehicles were pursued away from the police station. The police did what they could to give the Keys a head start, but media folk had already obtained the addresses the Keys were headed to.

And the single Key who didn’t choose to run and hide? Parish Councillor Richard Turner walked out of the police station like a man already acquitted, five steps ahead of his solicitor and a pair of bulky friends. If he expected thrown flowers and cheers, he got a shock. Within seconds, the heavies were forced to step closer and shepherd him to his car under a torrent of abuse. Someone launched an egg that splattered his suit.

Despite what he’d done – or because of it, hiding the bodies had been to save his village – he still had a number of well-wishers. Three large acolytes sat in a van parked across his driveway gates and held back the reporters who’d followed him home. Like his own SS-like group. But Turner couldn’t ignore an audience. In the time it took to swap to a suit that didn’t have an egg stain, the councillor appeared at his first-floor bedroom balcony, like the Pope, and addressed their questions.

‘Are you a killer?’

Perhaps this worked sometimes, but Turner gave the answer everyone expected: no. ‘I couldn’t hurt a fly. Look into my history and you will see this is so. This is my first ever arrest, and the same goes for my son and for Mr Crabtree and the rest of us. We’re model citizens. Our only fault was loving our home too much. That was why we did it. To avoid bringing the kind of attention it is now receiving.’

Bennet watched the whole thing on the news. What a twat, he thought. He wished he was there, with a slingshot. If this bastard had had his way, Lorraine and the others would still be buried for all time in a forgotten, shallow grave. Dozens, perhaps even hundreds of families and friends would still be in the dark about what happened to their missing loved ones.

‘Do you understand how suspicious it was that you chose to hide the bodies in the very same place where a little girl’s body was dumped?’

‘Yes. I see your single-minded blindness, all of you. Take to the air, or load up Google Earth, and pick a better place. Yes, there are woods and rockeries and moors, but, as callous and hateful as it sounds, Lake Stanton is the perfect place to hide something out here. Whoever killed poor Sally Jenkins simply had the same idea as I did, that is all. I had nothing to do with killing little Sally, or the film-makers who came to document her story. Your focus should be on asking the police why they didn’t think about searching that lake all those years ago.’

This was the crux of the matter. A simple case of probabilities. How likely was it that the murders of a young girl and of four people looking into that crime weren’t connected? What were the odds that someone could dump corpses where one already lay and be oblivious to it? And when did anyone ever hear about so-and-so hiding bodies left by whatshisname? To most, Turner and his cohorts were a little puppy standing next to a pile of dog poo on a carpet.

But the Crown Prosecution Service seemed to think another dog might have sneaked into the house to dump a load and then fled. There were no plans as yet to charge Turner and his clan with murder, although Sutton’s murder squad was still analysing the various crime scenes.

‘Do you have any clue as to who killed five people?’

‘I don’t,’ Turner bellowed from his perch. ‘There’s no proof yet that all five are the work of the same perpetrator. If anything, the method suggests otherwise. Killers of little girls don’t then go on to murder four adults. And if it was so, there was no attempt to hide the bodies.’

‘The film crew was shooting a documentary about the murder in 2010 – did it occur to you that perhaps someone didn’t want secrets unearthed?’

‘That would suggest a local killer, scared of exposure. I implore you not to assume that these killers live in or around Lampton. Please. I know my people, and none of them would do such a thing. Whoever killed Sally was a transient. We are a tourist spot, after all. I would suggest the killers of the film crew are also visitors. There’s no proof they were targeted because of this documentary. They could have upset someone in some other town or city. They could have been fleeing a danger. One of the deceased, John Crickmer, had a drugs past and the answer might well be found amongst dodgy acquaintances of his.’

That wouldn’t go down well with Crickmer’s people, Bennet knew.

‘The police haven’t officially ruled you and the others out of the killings. Do you expect additional charges for murder to be forthcoming?’

‘That’s all I have to say for the moment. Please remember that I am facing charges of perverting the course of justice. I didn’t kill anyone. Now, please, you should leave my village alone. There’s no need for you to be here,