The Rules of Murder Read online

  ‘Maybe he doesn’t have access to the house. Or maybe he did try to wake them but couldn’t. Remember I said there was a party here last night. And when I say party… have you really heard nothing of the Redfearnes?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  Why was that really so hard to believe? They weren’t exactly the Kardashians. In fact, even if they were, Dani wouldn’t know much because she had no interest whatsoever in that kind of thing.

  ‘They hold an annual summer party for the great and good,’ Easton said. ‘They get all sorts coming here. The last few years there’s always been a few pictures in the press the day after. Minor royalty, TV personalities, sports stars, lords, MPs, plus a hell of a lot of plain old rich folk. They raise money for charities, but really it’s just an excuse for a huge piss-up from what I gather. But…’

  Easton trailed off.

  ‘But what?’

  ‘Remember that story in the national press about the Presidents Club charity dinner?’

  ‘What, where agency models were hired as hostesses and plied with alcohol so that slimy old men could ogle them and grope them and hopefully take them to their suites to screw them after?’

  ‘All vindictive allegations according to the organisers. Anyway, I’ve heard the Redfearnes’ event is kind of like the West Midlands’ equivalent.’

  Dani cringed at the thought of what that meant. In fact she was now wondering how exactly she’d never heard any of this.

  ‘Back to the point, though,’ she said, ‘the parents don’t know Oscar is down here?’

  ‘Not that I’m aware of.’

  Dani shook her head in despair. The parents, or some other family member, would have to do a formal identification at the morgue at some stage, and while she really didn’t want the Redfearnes seeing their son out here like this, it felt wrong to Dani that they were stuck back up at the house not even knowing it was their son who’d been found dead in their garden.

  ‘Why was the groundskeeper down here anyway?’ Dani asked.

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘Look around you. It’s not exactly an ornamental lawn here, is it? There’re no trimmed hedges or flowerbeds or rows of vegetables. So why was he down here?’

  Easton just shrugged yet again. She made a mental note of the unanswered question. The conversation paused. With her brain absorbed, Dani continued to stare at the two FSIs who were now deep in conversation about something.

  ‘Is there a problem?’ Dani said when she noticed the quizzical look on what she could see of Tariq’s face, given his hood and mask.

  He looked up at her and sighed. ‘Come and take a look.’

  But before Dani moved, his eyes flicked to behind her shoulder, a split second before there was a blood-curdling scream.

  Dani flinched and spun around, sinking down as though prepping herself to attack whatever threat was there.

  She didn’t attack. Instead she straightened up to see a woman a few yards away, mouth and eyes wide in horror. Wearing grey sweatpants and matching hoody, she had dyed blonde hair, which was all mussy, remnants of make-up from the night before still around her eyes.

  ‘No!’ she screamed. ‘Oscar!’

  She fell to her knees. A uniformed police officer came darting up from behind her.

  ‘What the hell?’ Easton shouted as he stepped forward, towards the PC.

  ‘I’m… sorry,’ the young PC said, out of breath, his face as white as Caroline Redfearne’s now was.

  ‘Come, on, Mrs Redfearne,’ Easton said, as he crouched down and gently tried to prise Caroline back to her feet. ‘You don’t need to see this.’

  She was sobbing as she shakily got back up. Easton was doing a good job of standing between her and the body a few yards behind him. But then her face turned to determination in a flash, and she shoved Easton out of the way and took another step towards her son before she screamed again, even louder and more pained this time.

  ‘Oscar!’

  The PC reached out for her and strangely his touch seemed to calm her for an instant, before she turned and hunched over and spewed thick red vomit all down the crotch of his uniform.

  ‘Bloody hell!’ He shouted as he stepped back in disgust, but when his eyes found Dani’s hard glare, his outburst was short-lived. Comeuppance, she thought.

  Dani moved up to them and held back her gag reflex at the sight and stench of the thick, chunky vomit as she gently put her arm on Caroline’s shoulder.

  ‘I’m so sorry, Mrs Redfearne. I can’t imagine what you’re feeling. But please, you don’t need to see this. And we need to work here. If you go back to the house, we’ll come to speak with you very shortly.’

  Caroline looked to Dani and gave a kind of glare that she couldn’t quite read. The next moment the vomit-covered PC had managed to coerce her into moving and they were slowly heading away without any more words spoken.

  ‘Great,’ Tariq said, coming up to Dani’s side. ‘And now the crime scene is bloody contaminated with the remnants of late-night cocktails and whatever the hell she was eating at two a.m.’

  ‘At least now we know they know,’ Easton said.

  Strangely, Dani kind of agreed. If anything, the surprising thing was that it had taken them so long to find out. ‘You said you’d found something,’ she said to Tariq.

  She moved over to him and he bent down and indicated a small bloody object in the dirt a few feet away from the body.

  ‘An earring?’ Dani asked after she’d studied it for a few seconds.

  ‘Looks like it,’ Tariq said, picking the silvery object up with tweezers before dangling it in the air while he and Dani stared.

  ‘I’m guessing Oscar Redfearne wasn’t wearing that,’ Dani said.

  ‘Neither of his ears is pierced.’

  ‘Could he have had it in a pocket or something and dropped it?’ Easton asked, who was now hovering over Dani.

  ‘Possibly,’ Tariq said. ‘Though it is covered in blood, even if it’s not clear whose blood it is. But look closely at the pin.’

  Dani edged her head further forward a couple of inches. ‘That’s not dirt, is it?’ she said.

  ‘We’ll test, but I don’t think so. It looks more like a small clump of flesh to me.’

  ‘So it was torn out?’ Easton said.

  ‘Could have been.’

  ‘You think he did it?’ Easton said, indicating Oscar Redfearne.

  ‘Maybe he did.’

  ‘So there was a struggle with a woman—’ Easton said.

  ‘No. Just someone wearing an earring—’ Dani interjected.

  ‘Oscar rips out the earring but then… comes off worse… much worse.’

  ‘Possibly,’ Dani said, deep in thought as Tariq placed the earring into an evidence bag. ‘Either that, or perhaps worse… we have another victim.’

  Chapter Four

  By the time Dani made her way back up to the house with Easton, she was already feeling mentally fatigued from the time spent witnessing the grim crime scene. Tariq and his team, which had now been expanded in order to undertake a more thorough sweep of the area, would be on site for some time yet, as would Jack Ledford, who’d arrived less than an hour ago. Dani, too, was unsure exactly how long she’d be at Drifford House today, though she’d already made clear to Easton that he should scrub any plans he’d had for the day. She’d texted Jason to let him know the position too, and he’d called more than once while Dani had been in the woods.

  Before heading into the house, she wandered over to her car and took the chance to call him back and explain the situation to him. Not just the fact she would be likely tied up for the rest of the day, but the basics of what they were looking at with the Redfearne crime scene too. Jason might not be an active police officer any more, but he remained Dani’s main sounding board for every facet of her life, from her ongoing recovery from the traumatic brain injury which had nearly ended her life almost three years ago, and everything that brought with it, to her thoughts and requests for
advice on cases.

  Would her boss, DCI McNair, approve of that? Dani really didn’t know, and she wouldn’t let on to McNair that she used Jason in that manner, but she did know that she trusted Jason’s integrity implicitly.

  Though that didn’t mean she liked or agreed with everything he said.

  ‘Just take it easy,’ Jason said, not for the first time during the brief conversation. ‘You’ve got a big day tomorrow.’

  The Clarkson trial. He didn’t need to remind her of that. It was the very reason she’d been so on edge for weeks now. Yet, in a strange way, it wasn’t thoughts of the trial itself which were bothering her right now, it was thoughts of how she’d manage to keep on top of this new case and still find the time to ensure she was in court. She’d promised she’d be there. She couldn’t break that.

  ‘You need to be ready,’ Jason said.

  ‘I will be ready.’

  ‘What have you taken today?’ he asked.

  ‘I’ve got to go,’ she said.

  She gritted her teeth as she ended the call and turned back to Easton, who was standing ten yards away fiddling with his phone. He put the mobile away as she walked up to him. He had a questioning look, though he said nothing as they turned and approached the uniformed officer who was standing guard at the closed main doors to the house. Not the same officer who’d been vomited on earlier, Dani noted, and she wasn’t clear if this officer was there now to keep people in or out.

  ‘Now for the worst part,’ Easton said.

  ‘Indeed,’ Dani said. ‘But you can be damn sure it’s going to be a lot worse for them than it is for us.’

  * * *

  The room they eventually settled in was a library, a room nearly as big as the entire downstairs of most standard family homes. The walls on two sides of the room had dark wood, floor-to-ceiling bookshelves crammed with all manner of works. Leather sofas, armchairs, and reading tables filled the middle of the room. On one wall were three huge sash windows with original internal shutters, the tall panes looking out over rolling lawns and huge beech and oak trees in full greenery. It was like something out of a movie. And this was just one of a multitude of rooms on the ground floor.

  And then there were the servants… or staff, or whatever it was the illustrious owners called the hired help. In the intervening half hour since Dani and Easton had walked through the front doors of the mansion, they’d already been introduced to several members of the team. Pamela Longbridge, the overall head of staff and something of an assistant to the Redfearnes it seemed; Matilda Fraser, head of domestic services, which Dani took to mean she was in charge of those responsible for cooking and cleaning; Clive Pichon, the groundskeeper who’d found the body, and there was also a cluster of cleaners busily removing debris from the night before. Excepting the cleaners perhaps, they’d all have to be formally interviewed, some of them several times over, and Dani had already set in motion the order for a team of DCs and DSs to start the process of gathering initial statements from the people still on site.

  But for her and Easton it was the thankless task of Henry and Caroline Redfearne up first.

  The Redfearnes were sitting next to each other on brown leather armchairs, Easton and Dani opposite on a cream sofa. Caroline Redfearne had tidied herself up some since she’d spewed her guts up outside. She was now wearing jeans and a smart red blouse, her make-up was fully removed, and her hair was tied back. Henry looked as though he might be going to the office, dressed in smart grey trousers and a salmon-pink shirt. Despite their tidy attire, both were red-eyed, their features droopy and lifeless. How much of that was from the night before, and how much because of their son, Dani couldn’t tell, though she was certain the latter weighed far more heavily, no matter how horrendous their hangovers were.

  ‘I’m very sorry for your loss,’ Dani said, knowing how lame those words were, though she felt they had to be said.

  Henry shook his head solemnly. Caroline blew her nose into a hanky which she left scrunched in her hand for further use.

  ‘We’re going to need to ask you a few questions about your son. About what happened to him. I can’t imagine your pain right now, but I promise you we’ll do everything we can to find the truth, and who did this.’

  A couple of nods.

  ‘When did you last see Oscar?’ Dani asked. ‘Alive, I mean.’

  The couple looked at each other for a few moments as if searching for the answer. Caroline motioned for her husband to go for it.

  ‘I can only say for certain that it was some time yesterday afternoon,’ he said.

  ‘Do you know what time roughly?’

  ‘Four o’clock? Maybe five? But… when did this happen? Do you know?’

  ‘I’m afraid we aren’t able to say yet. The alarm was raised at just after nine a.m. this morning. We’re very keen to narrow the window as much as we can, which is why it’d be very helpful to know when you last saw him.’

  The couple shared a look again. ‘I’m sorry,’ Henry said. ‘He was here at the party, but… I honestly don’t know what time I last saw him.’

  ‘What was the party? Was it a special occasion?’ Easton asked.

  ‘It was just an informal gathering,’ Henry said. ‘Friends, acquaintances.’

  That didn’t much sound like what Easton had referred to.

  ‘There must have been a fair few people here if you didn’t see Oscar at all for several hours?’ Easton said.

  Henry glared at him, and Dani gave her colleague a look which she hoped he’d recognise as tone it down a little, will you. His question had been innocent enough, but Dani had sensed the scepticism in his tone.

  ‘How many guests were here?’ Dani asked.

  ‘I mean… exact numbers? I don’t know. Over two hundred. Plus we had a lot of extra hired help for the day. A couple dozen. Pamela could give you names and details for all of the staff.’

  ‘And the guests?’ Easton asked. ‘We’ll need a full list. It’ll be very important for our enquiries.’

  Henry looked as though he was about to argue against that for a moment. ‘You’re going to be speaking to all of them?’ he asked, sounding deflated. ‘You can imagine this is an incredibly private matter.’

  ‘We understand,’ Dani said, ‘and we always act as discreetly as possible in matters of this nature, but it’s going to be essential that we follow up with anyone who was here yesterday. I hope that makes sense? We just want to find out what happened to Oscar.’

  Henry shut his eyes. His wife reached out and put her hand on his lap. Dani thought she understood, at least from the Redfearnes’ point of view, why they might be reticent for the police to speak to the party-goers. As traumatised as they clearly were about their son’s death, Henry was a man who, in his own eyes, was rich and powerful and who had a reputation to uphold. His natural will to keep that reputation intact was there, right beneath the surface, despite the horrific circumstances.

  For one thing, the great and good, as Easton had put it, would certainly be thinking twice about attending next year’s party, if there even was one, given what had happened.

  ‘Of course,’ Caroline said when it was clear her husband was saying nothing. ‘We’ll give you everything you need.’

  Henry opened his eyes again and nodded resolutely.

  ‘So you think the last time you saw Oscar was around four or five p.m.?’ Dani asked.

  ‘Something like that,’ Henry said. ‘But I really don’t know for sure.’

  ‘Who was he with?’ Easton asked.

  ‘When?’

  ‘When you last saw him.’

  ‘I already said I can’t really recall exactly when I last saw him.’

  He looked to his wife again for reassurance, but she said nothing.

  ‘Did he have any friends with him yesterday?’ Dani asked.

  ‘A couple of close friends of his were here, yes.’

  ‘Did you see him with them?’

  ‘Of course, at various points, but Oscar kne
w a lot of the guests and he liked to mingle.’

  ‘What time did the party end?’ Easton asked.

  The couple looked at one another again. ‘Officially it was until one in the morning,’ Caroline said, ‘but some of our close friends stayed well past that. I went to bed a little after two. Henry?’

  Another puzzled look. ‘Probably after four. Something like that.’

  ‘And you’d no indication at that point that anything untoward had happened?’ Easton asked.

  ‘Do you really think I’d have been sipping brandy and talking crap if I had!’ Henry snapped in a sudden outburst.

  The room fell into a momentary silence. Dani gave Henry the time to defuse. There was no point in getting him hot and bothered. Though it seemed Easton was intent on toeing a different line.

  ‘And there was no point in, what, that twelve hours, when you wondered where Oscar had got to?’ he asked.

  ‘He’s eighteen,’ Henry said, glaring. ‘He gets on with things. We’re not his babysitters.’

  Henry was now getting riled, Dani could see, and she wasn’t sure she wanted that, but then it did seem odd to her that over such a long period, Oscar’s parents had not once considered where their son might be and had simply carried on partying.

  ‘What about Oscar’s friends?’ Easton asked.

  ‘What about them?’

  ‘You mentioned he had a couple of friends here. Did you see them at all through the rest of the day and night?’

  ‘I’ve no idea when I last saw them. I wasn’t keeping a fucking rota of where and when I saw every single person.’

  Caroline put her hand on her husband’s thigh again and rubbed gently, though it did nothing to soothe his bubbling tension, which was now clear on his tensed-up face.

  ‘I appreciate that, Mr Redfearne,’ Easton said, and Dani was torn as to whether she wanted him to carry on pushing. ‘But can either of you recall specifically whether you saw Oscar’s friends during the evening? Or, like Oscar, was the last time you saw them during the afternoon?’

  ‘I’m pretty sure Alex was here later on,’ Caroline said, looking to Henry for confirmation.