Detective Inspector Rhys-Morgan was dozing in his chair when a knock on the door roused him from his slumber.
“Come in!” It was an awful dream anyway. (The one where he was wandering in the fruit and vegetable section of Tesco wearing nothing but his pyjamas. And a large aubergine.)
He sat forward and picked instinctively reached for the mug on his desk and took a mouthful of the contents. It was cold. How long had he been asleep?
“You alright, Guv?” Sergeant Jenkins asked as he entered the office and spied his superior’s face.
“I’ll live, Tommie.” He looked up. “You don’t look too hot yourself. What’ve you got for me?”
“Just got the official confirmation about Frank’s wife, Sarah. She was one of the victims.”
Rhys-Morgan nodded. “I feared as much when I saw the medical report, yesterday. I think something funny is going on. This one’s tricky - take a seat.”
“Er, Chief?” Tommie nodded at the clock on Rhys-Morgan’s wall. “Everyone’s waiting in the briefing room. I came to find out where you were!”
“Damn!” Rhys-Morgan leapt to his feet. He had obviously been asleep for longer than he thought. “Sorry Tommie. Let’s go!”
Tommie led the way to the briefing room while Rhys-Morgan tried to collect his thoughts. Hopefully one of his men will have uncovered the crucial piece of evidence that will make this case start to make sense. Or, failing that, will have brought him a double expresso from the Starbucks round the corner.
“All right gang, listen up!” he told the assembled troops. “We’ve got some more information since yesterday. I want to get to the bottom of this one, quickly. The press are already beginning to sniff around and I don’t want rumours getting out of hand.”
He turned to the blackboard at the front of the room.
“OK, first up,” he said. “Bobby and Tommo have come up trumps with the vehicles. The red landrover was indeed Frank Jackson’s.” He connected the word Landrover and Frank’s name with a wavy chalk line. “The moped and volvo belonged to,” he checked the paper in his hand, ”Emma Fredricks and Duncan Bridges. Both local. Both young. Both probably victims.”
“Er, Guv?” It was PC Robert Williams.
“Yes, Bobby?”
“Forensics came through about twenty minutes ago. Emma and Duncan are both positive matches.”
Rhys-Morgan nodded and replaced the question marks linked to each vehicle on the blackboard with the appropriate owner’s name.
“That brings the identified victims to five.”
“Add Frank’s wife Sarah and we have six, Guv.” Tommie told him.
“But what we still lack is a motive,” said Rhys-Morgan. “I went down to Frank and Dave’s lawyers yesterday hoping to get a lead on that. It seems that they had not received any threats of any kind. However, Anthony Smeg – the young lawyer that represented them – was missing.” Rhys-Morgan somehow managed to make the word ‘lawyer’ sound like ‘parasite’. “So too was the law firm’s secretary, Wendy Lloyd. Both Anthony and Wendy have been confirmed among the victims.”
Rhys-Morgan paused to write both names on the blackboard, linking them to each other and to Frank and David.
“Now,” he continued, “their roles in the Jackson and Lloyd case may just be coincidental. Wendy was David Lloyd ‘s sister-in-law, married to his brother Peter. There’s no sign of him yet but neither do we have a positive ID from forensics. Whatever happened there may simply have affected them too.
“However,” he paused again as he chalked up Peter? and linked the name to David and Wendy.
“However,” he repeated, “we cannot rule out the possibility that something more sinister is going on.”
“By who, Guv?” asked Tommie. “Who could possibly want to hurt Frank and Sarah?”
“Well, although they received no actual threats that we are aware of, Mr Butterworth informed me that they were working on a legal case against Garth Jones. It seems that Jackson and Lloyd wanted some recompense for the ruination of their reputations.”
“Excuse me, Guv,” said PC Roger Davies from the assembly, his voice quavering slightly with the excitement of a potentially big find. “Garth Jones is missing. No one’s seen him since last day.”
“Ha!” cried Rhys-Morgan. “I knew it!”
“That’s because he’s probably another one of the victims, Guv,” said another voice.
“What?”
It was PC Williams again. “One of the victims, Guv.”
“I don’t understand. What would Garth Jones be doing in a field with Dave Lloyd and the Jacksons?”
“I don’t know, Guv.” Williams answered, shaking his head. “But it’s on this morning’s forensic report. Working from information on file, some of the blood on the robes has been given a 99.7% probability of being Garth Jones’.”
Rhys-Morgan took the print-out from PC Williams and read it for himself. It was true. His bubble burst momentarily, he turned and wrote Garth Jones on the board, followed by several question marks and a couple of exclamation marks for good measure. He stood back then lent forward and added another exclamation mark, just to be sure.
“I don’t like to say it,” said Tommie, “but I’d have to agree that it wasn’t him. I just don’t think this is Garth’s style. I mean, the man’s heart’s as evil as a goblin’s testicles but he wouldn’t go this far. He’d have too much to lose and too little to gain. I certainly don’t think he’s be intimidated by a court case. He gets his kicks from that kind of thing.”
“Then what?” He sighed and scanned the faces in front of him. “Cerys. Any news on Patrick Edwards?”
“By all accounts he was a top bloke,” she said. “He was definitely a pagan. Invited one of the nuns to do some naked frolicking once. No mention of ritual suicide, though.”
“Anything else strange apart from the paganism?”
“Yes. But not to do with Patrick Edwards.”
Closing his eyes in an effort to concentrate, Rhys-Morgan pinched the bridge of his nose.
“Explain.”
“It was just something that Mary said – she was the nun that was tied up in the robbery there a couple of weeks ago. Apparently a couple of tortoises were taken. Now, that’s a bit odd in itself but we found that tortoise-shell…”
“…at the bomb-site.” Rhys-Morgan finished.
“Yes, though actually it wasn’t found at the site itself.”
“But your report said…”
“Yes, well, it turns out that Cassidy was not entirely honest. I bumped into the Spandex and they told me it had been blown into a wood some distance away. It must have been right in the centre of the blast. I think it could be important. I mean, what was a tortoise doing there in the first place? They’re not exactly endemic.”
“They’re not endemic?” Rhys-Morgan had forgotten about the tortoise and his tired brain was not coping well. He spotted Cerys shaking her head at him with slightly wide eyes and did his best to recover quickly. “I mean, ahem, of course they’re not endemic.”
“Yes but why steal them from a school?” asked Tommie. “Why not just get one from a pet shop?”
The briefing room echoed with the sound of Rhys-Morgan slapping his forehead with his right palm.
“Maybe it did come from a pet shop,” he said. “Peter’s Pet Shop to be precise. Wendy lives - lived - above it. Presumably, her husband Peter runs it. That theft is probably just a coincidence, after all.”
“I guess the tortoise must have been part of the ritual,” said PC Davies. “A sacrifice, or something.”
“Assuming this was a ritual suicide,” said Rhys-Morgan. “But I’m not so sure. Why? Why would the likes of Anthony Smeg commit suicide when they so much to live for?”
“What’s a plausible alternative?” asked Tommie.
“Murder.” Rhys-Morgan replied with a slight curl of his top lip. “Rumour had it that Anthony and Wendy were having an affair. Maybe Peter found out and took the matter into his own hands. We all know the stats.”
A couple of the officers nodded in agreement but Tommie was not convinced. “But why kill the others, Guv? Why kill his brother?”
“I don’t know,” conceded Rhys-Morgan. “I’m just brainstorming. Maybe Dave found out but didn’t tell him. Maybe Peter just didn’t care anymore and killed everyone there including himself. Last act of a desperate man. A multiple murder-suicide.”
“Maybe it wasn’t murder or suicide?” suggested PC Davies. “Maybe it was just an accident. A sacrifice that went horribly wrong? Instead of chucking the tortoise on the fire, they chucked on a bundle of dynamite or something?”
“Maybe someone disguised some dynamite as a tortoise to fool them,” added Tommo nodding knowingly. “A conspiracy!”
Rhys-Morgan sank slowly into the plastic chair next to the blackboard and rubbed his eyes with his non-chalky hand as, before him, his officers bounced around ideas of steadily increasing imagination and decreasing likelihood. He waited patiently for a lull in the general hubbub before rising to his feet once more. At this the final murmurs – some theory involving a group remorse following the sacrifice of an innocent tortoise – ground to a halt.
“Maybe a lot of things,” Rhys-Morgan told them, the frustration spilling out of him in an uncharacteristic shout of rage. “Maybe the tortoise had explosive dia-bloody-rrhoea! But we still have unidentified bodies in the morgue and, whatever happened, we can’t assume that anyone was killed in the blast until we have full forensic reports. I want looking for Peter Lloyd and Garth Jones to be top priority. They’re not to be arrested – yet – but if they’re alive then I’d definitely like to talk to them.
“Cerys. I want you to take dogs and sniff around Garth Jones place. Look for clues that may confirm him as one of the victims. Take Tommo with you. Roger, you and Bobby pay another visit to Peter’s Pet Shop. If he’s not there, then check with the neighbours as to when they last saw him. Davie and Rhys, search for any evidence of sightings of either of them. Liaise with other forces and spread their descriptions around. Check airports and ferry terminals around the country. If they’re on the run, they’ve had over 48 hours to get away.
“The rest of you, keep working on that missing persons list. I want those bodies identified before the end of the day.”
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