No trace, p.5
No Trace, page 5
‘But you didn’t stay there. I think you drove further south down Abbeydale Road South, and once at Beauchief you made your way into the car park of the Discovery Centre. Then you got out of your car, and you got Shauna out. She was dead. You’d strangled her five minutes earlier in the car park of The Wagons, where you’d left your phone. The pathologist has completed his post mortem and it’s his opinion that a seatbelt is the probable cause of damage he found on his throat.
‘Once you’d carried her body deep into the woods and dumped it, you returned to your car. Returned to the pub to collect your phone and continue the pantomime of dropping off Shauna. You turned around at the Sports Club and went home.’
Still staring at the ceiling, Kevin shook his head. ‘Impossible.’
‘You knew where the CCTV was along that route. None covering the car parks at the pub or the Discovery centre. The cameras outside various shops on the way to the turn off for the Discovery Centre would show Shauna sitting in your car. But not that she was dead for a portion of that journey. There was no CCTV between the Discovery Centre turn-off and the Sport Club with a good enough quality or position to show the passenger seat was empty.
‘The friend that Shauna was supposed to meet said that she didn’t try to contact Shauna when she was late to the Sport Club. This was because Shauna had told her she wouldn’t be bringing her phone. We’ve seen calls logs that prove you’re quite possessive when Shauna goes out with friends. Dozens of calls were made by you on those nights. Her phone had no charge throughout Saturday afternoon and evening. I think Shauna was going to pretend she’d left her phone at home because it was dead. But it was so she could have a night free of calls from you.
‘That’s where your trip to the party comes in. You needed Shauna to have her phone so you could call it when she was late home, to play the doting and worried husband. But you found her phone at home. And decided to take it to her. But there would be a record of your journey somewhere, and you needed an excuse. You honked your horn outside the party so everyone would know you were there. An hour later you made yourself known again, to give the impression you’d been there the whole time. Backed up by your phone’s GPS location. But you weren’t there. You drove back to the woods, and you put Shauna’s phone in her handbag. You turned it on there and then, so nobody would know it had been at home after you’d supposedly dropped her off. Then you collected your phone, made sure the partygoers knew you were there at 11pm, and drove home. A couple of hours later you made a call to Shauna, so we’d have that record. Why would a killer call a dead victim, right?’
Kevin’s eyes came down from the ceiling and fixed her. ‘And this is where your imaginative story falls apart, Miller. Jared Lawton admitted killing Shauna. You said he confessed. You said he’d been charged with murder.’
‘We did get a confession off him. I never said it was for killing Shauna. And when you asked me if he’d been charged with murder, my actual words were, It is correct he’s facing charges. And he is.’
Liz sat back. ‘I think at first Jared was willing to accept the blame for the murder. I believe he thought he’d go down as a famous vampire murderer, that books would be written and occultists would honour his name. He thought the same had happened to a man called Layton Faddes, a self-confessed 200 year-old vampire who sacrificed a neighbour’s child and drank his blood. Faddes did indeed enjoy newspaper headlines and water cooler chat, long ago when the case was breaking news. But I helped Jared realise that people forget, and new stories capture the interest, and one day no one will remember him. And he’ll become just another killer destined to die in jail that no one cares about.
‘So Jared has had a change of heart. And of story. He now denies killing Shauna and says he found her in the woods. Already dead.’
Kevin shook his head fast. ‘He was there. He killed her. She was alive and laughing on the phone. You heard it.’
‘He was there because he has a lair nearby. He and his cronies hang out there all the time. He stumbled upon the body, just a hundred or so metres away. Remember what he said to you?’
Liz played a recording on her laptop. One fragment of the conversation between Kevin Campbell, worried partner of Shauna Campbell, and Jared Lawton, her supposed killer.
‘Call me the abactor.’
Liz said, ‘The police officer who told you that means cattle thief is right. Jared was big into a board game called Vampire: The Masquerade. That’s a popular game amongst lifestylers – vampire wannabes, basically. Some of the jargon in that board game includes Haven and Golden Circle. And Abactor. That word means a vampire who hunts in another’s feeding ground. When Jared called himself abactor, he thought he was talking to another vampire. The actual killer of the woman he’d just found in the woods.’
‘Idiotic. You can’t believe that crap, surely. He’d say anything. He’s got no proof of any of that.’
‘Actually, he has. Jared didn’t have his phone when we arrested him, and I now know why. He keeps it hidden because of various…let’s call them bizarre videos. He likes to record himself a lot. And he recorded his journey into the woods that night. I’m sure we can confirm the timestamps pretty soon. One video shows his discovery of the body, just after midnight. Another shows him telling the made-up story of her murder to his girlfriend, when she arrived a short time later. I’ve even seen footage of him trying to cut Shauna the next day and extract blood but failing because it was congealed inside her – he then used animal blood in a bowl instead to give his friends to drink. He filmed himself branding Shauna on the forehead, to make her one of his victims. I watched him slide off her shoes and lick them. I’ve seen him sit and talk to her. He really is quite a disturbed individual. But no killer. Obviously, I won’t show you such terrible things, but let me play a piece. Not the video itself. It’s the audio that’s important. It will sound quite familiar. His girlfriend was recording him when he answered Shauna’s ringing phone.
‘Hello,’ Jared says.
‘Who are you?’ a voice – Kevin’s - says on speaker, full of shock. India is giggling, clearly finding this funny as she records. ‘What the hell are you doing there?’
‘I am Arcadia, my kindred. Where is your Haven around here?’
A pause of at least fifteen seconds, then a calmer Kevin says, ‘I’m looking for my wife. Where is she?’
‘You cannot have the girl back…’
Liz ended the playback and stared at Kevin Campbell. ‘The last thing you expected was someone to answer a phone by a dead body in the woods at 1am. You were highly panicked. You didn’t ask if Shauna was there. Your first response was to ask what the man on the phone was doing there. By virtue of being a mobile phone, you couldn’t know where “there” was. It could have been that man’s house – after all, you were supposed to have no clue where Shauna was. Pretty soon after you got your wits about you, realised that the phone call would help your case, and you recorded the rest, careful to play the role of a puzzled, angry husband looking for his wife.
‘You reported Shauna missing as part of that plan, but what happened next was a blessing in disguise. The attending officer’s flippant attitude played right into your hands. You both played dumb. He got an easy shift. You got a guarantee that nobody would find Shauna, at least until her body decomposed and evidence was lost, while at the same time having proof that you did the dutiful loving-husband thing from the outset.’
Kevin Campbell was emotionless and silent for a moment, and then he broke out a slight grin. ‘You think you know everything? You think you’re smart? You think any of that is actually real evidence? What about motive, detective? Your default husband-must-have-killed-wife outlook is clouding your judgement. Check text and emails and ask everyone we knew. Aside from my own admitted paranoia because Shauna was beautiful, you won’t find fault in us as a couple. What reason would I have to kill my lovely wife? We loved each other. Can’t you understand that?’
‘I can and I believe all of what you just told me, Mr Campbell,’ Liz said, and began collecting her papers in preparation for ending the interview. ‘You have no history of violence or anger issues and no criminal record. I’ve heard no stories of abuse or serious arguments and there’s no evidence of affairs or even real tension between you and Shauna. I do think you loved Shauna.’
Liz paused here for maximum impact.
‘But can’t you get it into your skull that that doesn’t mean or prove anything?’
THE END
Jane Heafield, No Trace
