CRIME-SCENE CSI - DISLEY EPISODE ONE - MARKET STREET MASSACRE
Detective Superintendent Forester was daydreaming of a big drug-bust on derelict
Liverpool docksides when the call came in that there were an assignment for him.
"What is it? Library books overdue? Poachers in Lyme Park?"
"Don't be so cynical George," the voice said on the other end of the line. "It's not our
fault you got sent here instead of the big city. In fact, we seem to have a proper murder on our hands, a mass murder in fact."
"Murder, in Disley?" George was incredulous.
"Yes, a paperboy found the first bodies at first light littering the High Street. About twenty
victims in all,. Just lying they're in the streets. It's quite a blood bath, we hear."
"I'll get onto it before the press hear about us and find Disley on their maps," Forester said,
hanging up before his boss could give further verbal over his hatred of sleepy-town Derbyshire..
Forester pulled a team together, calling several officers from their Sunday lie-ins, and though
grumbly at first, each proved wide-awake at the prospect of real excitement on their patch. By the time Forester reached the town centre, several of his colleagues were already active. The Bobbies had cordoned off the High Street against the man and his dog, and a few pre-breakfast joggers who were nosing around already. The sky was clear and bright, but it felt chill. It would get warm as the early summer morning kicked in properly,
The bodies lay all around. Many had large holes in them, and blood was splattered
everywhere. Some had been shot in the backs. Others faced forward. Some corpses seemed relatively bloodless, but all of their faces were frozen in expressions of anger, fear and pain.
Sara Jackson, the vivacious forensics expert, was already at work on the scene. Her photographers
took shots of everything from all conceivable angles. Dan Reynarde was dusting every conceivable surface for fingerprints, and the forensics team leader was looking closely at each victim in turn, with puzzlement and confusion.
"What happened, Sara?" Forester asked.
Sara shrugged, as if this happened every day. "Multiple victims, multiple death causes. This
wasn't a solo operator, we have a bunch of killers to chase after. This was a gang job. If anything, it looks like these lads took on an army."
"What have we got to go on so far?"
"The killings took place right here. The bodies are just left rights where they fell. We found a few flick knives and broken bottles lying around, but I think they are just weapons the dead kids here used to defend themselves. I think this might have been a gang-war, and the opposition turned up heavily organized and with a more formidable array of weapons. These lads never stood a chance. They seem to have been taken down with military precision."
"How do you know that?" Forester asked.
"The bodies seem to be in distinctive groups. The corpses to the West End of the street seem to have been shot. The group outside the village bakery have multiple spear wound deaths, and the people to the east seem to have been trampled down by horses, and show signs of having been slashed by swords."
Forester shook his head. "I've seen people who have been shot before, when I had a Liverpool
beat. The bullet holes are a lot smaller than these."
Sara grinned. "These don't seem to be modern guns, more like old blunderbusses or muskets. They
would leave holes like a sawn off, only worse. That's when they use ball. If you look, some of the bodies are peppered with smaller holes over a wider area. They seem to have been hit with a spray of shot, which would fan out like shrapnel on them. The guns were old fashioned, and rather varied in style. It's like someone got their arms from an antique shop."
Forester scowled. "Real mystery. I'd never have imagined it. Now, what about these people whom
have non-shotgun injuries?"
Sara smiled. "That gets really weird. They seem to have been hit by several sharp points at once,
as if they had a fight with a giant hedgehog. Some of the spears or javelins seem to have caused stab wounds, and skewering effects, turning people into kebabs, while others inflicted more blunted impact wounds, like broken jaws and severe bruising injuries. It would take a lot of weight and leverage behind a long blade to press it through a man as fiercely as this. We are looking for men of great strength here. "
"And the cavalry victims?"
"Literally that," Sara said, "They look as if they were trampled by horses. A few have been slashed
by swords and such. We did find lots of horse manure around, and at least one broken nail from a horseshoe. We also found hoof prints on the edge of the park leading to the wheels of what we think must have been a large horsebox. We are taking casts and measurements before we leave here. Oh, I've saved the best for last. There is a particularly nasty looking body on the church gates."
Forester followed her lead to the Church of Saint Jude, a modest Saxon stone building protected
by heavy iron gates that resembled a castle portcullis. Chained to the padlocked gates was a heavily dismembered corpse, hacked down from neck to navel, with its legs severed, and lying on the floor below the torso. The head had also been severed, and was now impaled on a spike on top of the gates.
Sara smiled knowingly. "The neckline, what's left of it, shows signs of rope burns."
Forester took an educated guess. "Strangled first?"
Sara dismissed the answer, "Not strangled, hanged. We found the remains of the rope in a nearby wheelie bin. It's still tied in a noose."
Forester stared in amazement. "Hanged, cut to pieces, and decapitated. Someone really loved him."
Sara grinned in her enthusiasm to reveal more horrors. "I've been over the church wall to look at him from behind, His back is all scraped where he was dragged up the street. There's a trail of blood leading up to the West End of town, look. It would take a horse to drag a man that far up a steep slope like Disley Market Street. I think this lad was hanged, drawn and quartered. It's a kind of death no one's experienced for about two hundred years. It was once common to leave a criminal's head on top of a town gateway to rot. It wars a deterrent to crime, or so they claimed. "
.Forester congratulated her on a job well done, and went to the newsagents to question the boy
who reported the crime in the first place. He expected to see a child in tears, but the youngster seemed elated and eager to recount the most exciting things he'd ever seen in his life. The newsagent himself, old Mr. Randall, brought the boy a cup of tea.
"The Sinclars are phoning to say their paper hasn't arrived, but I covered for you. I said you were
helping the police with their inquiries. I think I unwittingly left them thinking you've been pinching their money. Sorry about that."
The boy didn't take in the impact of this, but Forester assured him that he was unlikely to be a
suspect in this case. They boy had little to report other than that he had come to work, and saw the bodies lying there, and that he had immediately dialed 999.
Forester assured him that he had done well, and turned his attention to Randall, who looked not
only old but also virtually fossilized. "Sir," Forester asked, did you not see anything on your way to the shop yourself?"
Randall shrugged. "I live in a flat upstairs. I haven't been out into the street."
Forester looked at him more sternly. "You don't seem to have trouble hearing me, so I assume
you haven't got timnitus or other hearing difficulties, so why didn't you hear all the shooting and shouting that must have been going on in the night round here?"
Randall sighed. "I heard the shooting, but I thought it was thunder. We get a lot of electrical
storms over the Derbyshire and Cheshire hills. As for any shouting, I guess sit was drowned out by the thunder and the shooting."
Forester growled. "Forget the thunder. There was only shooting.
Forester turned to Sara and asked her for the instant Polaroid pictures she had taken of the faces of
the corpses. Forester showed them to the old shopkeeper. "Do you recognize any of these lads?"
With barely a glance at the pictures, Randall started spilling names. "Oh, everyone
knows them. It's the Scal-Chavs. That's Glen Stableford. He's a bit of a deadleg round here. He always loiters around the shops leering at girls, being rude to passers by, occasionally trying to steal things off me and other shop-keepers."
This Glen Stableford was the youngster whose head now adorned the gates of St. Jude's. Other
boys in the pictures quickly turned out to be mates of this Glen boy.
Forester asked the uniformed boys what was known of this gang. A policeman replied
nonchalantly. "They have a reputation. We get complaints from time to time, but when we turn up, they move away and deny everything. We'd have to catch them at it to make any arrests, but so far, we see nothing. Looks like someone might have got angry enough to take the law into their own hands here."
Forester grew angry. "Maybe if you took the complaints more seriously, and sent a
proper investigation tem in, this would never have happened. Sending a squad car towards a gang is a way of telling them to stop making mischief until you have gone away. They are hardly going to misbehave with a marked police car passing by. You should have sent plain clothed detectives out."
Forester was wondering what to look at next when Randall said something that made his mind up for him. "Did you bring pictures of all the victims?"
Sara nodded, and she was impressed, as the old man had identified most of the gang very
easily. "Yes," she said, "why?"
"There's no picture of Billy Campbell here. He's usually always out with the gang. He's
usually inseparable from Stableford."
Forester asked if the shopkeeper knew the boy's address. The newspaper boy answered
for him. "11, Arbory Avenue. I deliver the Express and the TV Times to his Mum."
Forester left the crime scene squad to their work and headed to the Campbell house. The boy's father was up, washing his car in the front garden of the semi-detached dwelling.
Asked about his Son, and shown a police badge, the man immediately exploded. "What's the
little sod done now?"
"Where was he last night, and where is he now?" Forester insisted.
"The answer to both questions is right here, in the house, in his bedroom, to be exact. "I
grounded him. I refused to let him go out last night. He's still in bed sulking or sleeping now."
"Why did you punish him?"
"Bad mouthing his Mother, and insisting on going off somewhere with that scag,
Stableford instead of tidying his room out. He said there was something big on last night and Stables needed him. He seemed desperate to go, but I'd already told him that his room needed sorting out. I put my foot down hard for a change. Friday night it was nearly two AM when he let himself back in. I wasn't having that on Saturday as well."
I need to talk to him," Forester said. "Just a few questions, "
The man reluctantly agreed to fetch the boy, but as he reached the stairs the sleepy eyed
youth appeared at the top of them. His Father's angry outbursts had woken him. He wore shorts and tee shirt that had been daywear and pajamas for the best part of a week from the aroma of them.
Forester introduced himself and told the shocked, and now tearful teenager about his
friends and how they had died.
"I was going to go with them last night. I should have been there." The lad wept.
"You would have died with them if you did go," the policeman said. "Tell me what you know. Why was last night so special?"
The boy took a deep breath and reluctantly told the tale. "Stables was winding one of the local girls up. She rides past often on her bike. I think Stables fancies her but all he ever does is insult her and throw stones as she rides by. She gets upset. She shouts and swears, and Stables thinks its funny to wind her up so he carries on at her. We help him out. She threatens to get the police, but the police never really bother us. Anyway, on Friday, this bloke, some do-gooder, and a friend of hers, possibly even her boyfriend, turned up as we were winding her up. He punched Stables. He just walked right up past the rest of us and punched him. The girl just stood back and watched from further up the street. She was on her bike, and his was parked up beside hers. At first we did nothing, but then we started pelting the guy with stones and bricks. We obviously outnumbered him. He moved back. He didn't run, he just casually stepped clear of us. He said he'd be back with his mates if we hassled his friend again. Stables told him he could bring his entire army if he wanted. That's when him and Stables agreed to a proper rumble on Market Street for Saturday, for last night. I wanted to go, but of course, Dad stopped me, God, I had no idea anyone was going to get killed though." The boy broke down in tears.
"It's a shame no one else's parents stopped their kids from going out as well," Forester said/
When the boy calmed down, Forester got a description of the man who had fought with the gang. He was fat, balding, and unshaven. He wore old jeans and tee shirts, and badly laced shoes, and oddly square old-fashioned glasses that slid down his nose. The boy also provided the address of the girl they had taunted, and who seemed to know this stranger. Her name was Carol Mills.
Forester found her house easily, on the outskirts of the town, as reports came to him
over the cellphone that they had found ash-tree wood splinters and fragments of russet and wool at the crime scene. They had also found an old fashioned wooden flask containing a small supply of gunpowder. It had apparently been snapped off someone's necklace and lost in the battle for the High Street. There were also several pieces of tissue and toilet roll round on the scene, some with scorch marks as if they had been burnt away and discarded. Sara had a theory that they were home made pieces of gun wadding.
The girl, Carol was up and prowling nervously in her living room, quite visible through the
window as Forester approached the house. She was young and lovely, but looked worried and apprehensive. She spotted Forester approaching down her gravel drive, and opened the door even before he touched the doorbell.
"You seem to have been expecting this," Forester said, showing his ID.
The lady invited him in, and he entered. "I heard there was some sort of disturbance and fight in
the town. Was anyone hurt?"
Forester told her the facts as directly as he could. "About twenty dead, we think,
possibly more if any bodies were hidden from view or removed from the scene."
Carol cried. "Oh God."
"You seem unusually concerned. Did you know who was there? Were you aware of what was
going on?"
Carol seemed uncertain whether to deny or admit what she seemed to know. Forester
knew she would crack soon enough. She began. "I reported those brats time and time again, but did anyone do anything about it? Did anyone listen to me? No. They taunt me every time I go past, I mean every time. I went into the town centre on Friday to do some shopping. They had a pop at me then, and I went to the pub to steady my nerves. There was a man there. I hadn't seen him before, but he noticed I was a little upset, and he asked me what was going on. I told him all about it over a few drinks. It's not that I fancied him or anything. I have a boyfriend. He l lives abroad, so I don't see him much, but I guess this guy felt something for me. Anyway, he said he'd had experience of dealing with local yobbos. He told me He'd sort them out for me if I just gave him the nod. I jokingly told him he had my permission. I didn't think he took me seriously. Unfortunately, he did. When I left the pub, he followed me, and when the gang started on me again, he left me in charge of his bike and went wading in to have a go at them. He punched their ringleader, but they forced him away with stones and bricks that are when he arranged to come back with his mates and nail them once and for all. I told him to leave it all alone, but he said he couldn't.
I avoided the town last night especially, not that I go out in Disley after dark if I can
avoid it anyway. Too many latchkey kids roaming the streets. I was worried there might be a fight, This morning, I heard the papers were delayed because of a riot in the town centre. I even heard someone might be dead, but I don't know much more than that." The girl sobbed, in some distress.
"Tell me what you know of this man from the pub. I think we really need to talk to him."
Carol wiped her tears away on the sleeve of her blouse and sniffled. "His name is Barry
Keel. He lives over the other side of Kinder Scout, in the village of Sledge. He's a labourer and apparently, he's into civil war re-enactments."
Forester coughed and nearly choked as his case seemed to spring towards a conclusion
before his eyes. He asked excitedly for more information.
Carol continued. "Apparently, he's in some regimente of the battle re-enactors. He told
me about this at the pub when we met for the first time. Well, the only time, really. He said they had a show on today near Sheffield, at some forsaken little place called Dimblewick He invited me to go, though I wasn't really bothered. He left me a few leaflets."
Forester tried to contain his elation, as he asked for and received the leaflets. They were
heavily illustrated. The soldiers were garbed in old-fashioned clothes made of wool and carried a variety of weapons. Some bore muskets, which were shown clearly firing in the pictures. Some wore powder flasks round their necks, keeping the explosive gunpowder clear of the guns until needed. Others had long poles, described in the picture captions as pikes. Some of the poles were twelve to fifteen foot long. The men were seen ,moving with them in close formation, which told Forester that he had found the giant hedgehog described by Sara Jackson. There were also images of cavalry horses galloping, as their cavalier riders brandished rapier blades .
There were several contact numbers on the leaflets, and one bore a scrawled hand
written note of Barry Keel's number too..
Forester thanked the lady for her honesty, left the house, went to his car and used his
cellphone to dial some of the numbers, hitting mostly answering machines. Forester swore to himself. If there was a show, that is where the re-enactors would be heading towards. The arena would be open to the public by one o clock in the afternoon. Forester saw that it was barely ten in the morning as yet, so he had plenty of time. He phoned the Chief of Police in Sheffield to make arrangements, insisting that no one makes a move until he arrives there himself, and then, rounding up a few of his own team, including Sara Jackson, he started out towards Sheffield. .
Traffic delays caused by the warm weather driving everyone out into the countryside,
meant that the re-enactment had started as the police arrived at the showground. Forester had them watch the action for a time. Musketeers had guns that fired powder, but no shot or ball. Sara pointed out that it would be no problem for them to simply slip shot in too if they wanted to for less public activity. The musketeers also used tissue paper to wad down the powder into the guns between shots. Pikemen moved in close formation, much as the pictures had depicted them doing, but mostly against another pike-block approaching the other way. On contact, the re-enactors would raise the pikes slightly to avoid to close a physical injury to the opposition. It looked like a cross between a rugby scrum and a game of Kerplunk with people. Forester easily pictured the effect of doing this against underarmed opposition. Disley had been the site of just such a practice.
The cavalry also harassed the pikemen, riding close with their swords raking the tips
of the pikes. Forester saw the safety concerns on the field and pictured the same tactics without such consideration, on a quiet village street. He knew that he had the right suspects now.
One of Sara's men came over to them. "We found a horsebox with wheels that match our castings. At least one rider here was involved.
Forester tapped an idle soldier on the back and asked him which man was Barry Keel. The man pointed him out quickly as being a green russet doublet uniformed pike-commander. As the show wound down, and the 'Irish Brigade' led by this burly man got close enough, Forester waved his warrant card and signaled to Keel that he would appreciate a word or two. Keel smiled, turned to the regimente and ordered the pikemen to wheel to the left. With a few other commands, the block moved slowly towards the police with pikes charged, as musketeers reached for shot.
"I'm not coming quietly," Keel whispered.
From the sides of the field policemen with batons and riot shields rushed in to engage the enemy. Forester grinned as he started to usher the unarmed CSI team clear of the battleground. Small town crime could be just as exciting as anything the big cities had to offer .
Arthur Chappell
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