Murder at the Meet

by Bruce Beckham

  13. HELIX UNWINDS

  Thursday midday, Penrith

  ‘The Chief’s been on the warpath all morning, Guv.’

  ‘Tell me something new, Leyton.’

  ‘She even came down in person – in case you were ignoring your phone.’

  Skelgill glances at the handset that now lies upon his desk; there are numerous missed calls and messages.

  ‘What’s all the fuss?’

  DS Leyton does a double take, as if he knows his boss is being disingenuous – but when he sees only belligerence in his superior’s expression he quickly readjusts.

  ‘Oh, well, Guv – I suppose you’ve been busy. I didn’t hear it myself – but there was an unauthorised report on the local radio – that we’re interviewing a suspect in the Mary Wilson case.’

  Skelgill stares implacably at his subordinate.

  ‘That’ll be Smart, then. Piling pressure on the Chief.’

  But DS Leyton shakes his head.

  ‘George on the front desk says it was claimed as “a source close to the police” – besides, DI Smart’s been screaming blue murder. Seems he was planning a press conference this afternoon down in Manchester – and was going to make a big fanfare of it. Now we’re being inundated with requests from the media to name the suspect.’

  Skelgill seems relatively indifferent to the predicament.

  ‘I’m surprised she’s been taken in. That confession’s got more holes in it than my old hiking socks.’

  DS Leyton shrugs resignedly.

  ‘Maybe it’s the chance to crack such a high-profile case – the limelight can be dazzling. Except now it’s rained on their parade and the Chief wants to know who was responsible.’

  Skelgill shifts in his seat and draws his mug towards him, but it contains only tepid dregs from yesterday and he is plainly irked by this state of affairs. He speaks tersely.

  ‘What’s to stop the con telling someone he’s put his hand up for it?’

  ‘I believe they’ve had him in solitary since he started to sing, Guv.’ DS Leyton frowns introspectively. When he continues his voice is more tentative. ‘Reading between the lines, I wondered if the Chief suspected DS Jones.’

  ‘What!’

  Skelgill looks like he would summarily shoot the messenger. DS Leyton holds up his hands in surrender.

  ‘Just the impression I got, Guv.’

  ‘Leyton, there’s not a cat in hell’s chance that Jones would leak something.’

  DS Leyton is a little relieved that Skelgill has not asked him directly what the Chief said to prompt him to form this hypothesis.

  ‘Thing is, Guv – DS Jones is quite pally –’ (he sees further disapproval, a blanching of Skelgill’s grey-green eyes) ‘well, not exactly pally – but she knows that Kendall Minto geezer. I’m sure she once said they were at school together. And George reckons he saw him trying his chat on her when he was here for the press briefing on Tuesday.’

  Skelgill is now sufficiently annoyed as to have risen and crossed to his window. The weather is transitioning yet again, in keeping with the unpredictable pattern that is typical of an English autumn, and wood pigeons and jackdaws are being swept across a chequered sky like windblown leaves. A scudding cloud obscures the sun and the browning landscape seems to darken beneath his scowl.

  ‘If it were Minto why was it on the radio? Why not in his newspaper – or on their website?’

  ‘I was thinking about that, Guv – but say he wanted to cover his tracks? They’re in cahoots anyway, that media lot. He gives them a little tip off, next time it’s the other way around.’

  Skelgill does not reply. He stalks over to the map on the wall behind his desk. He stares, unmoving; it is not apparent that he is seeking some detail. DS Leyton twiddles his thumbs as if to distract himself from his boss’s displeasure. Yet when Skelgill speaks it is as though he has banished their conversation from his mind.

  ‘What Jones said – about treating the witnesses as suspects – remember?’

  DS Leyton nods obediently, glad for the change of subject. He senses his superior wants to make some announcement, but that it is against his nature to do so.

  ‘Are you onto something, Guv?’

  ‘Might be something and nothing.’ Skelgill realises it is the second time today he has employed the platitude.

  DS Leyton continues brightly.

  ‘You always say, Guv – you never know when the truth might be staring you in the face – or the lies – hah!’

  Skelgill appears only to be half listening. Perhaps he is picturing the events up in the oak woods of Borrowdale. He intones slowly, still addressing the map.

  ‘At the time Mary Wilson disappeared there were half a dozen possible explanations, and nobody seemed to be panicking. If our lot had known what we do – Jones is right – they would have come down on the dale like a ton of bricks.’

  DS Leyton is nodding, but also beginning to look doubtful.

  ‘At the end of the day, though, Guv – they did implement the mass DNA testing. That was unprecedented. And it put the locals in the clear.’

  Skelgill turns on his heel – and is about to gainsay this point – that only a positive result would have been meaningful; a negative proved very little. But there is now another twist in the tale – in the microscopic double helix that is deoxyribonucleic acid – news of which he awaits from DS Jones. He relents, and instead decides to relate what he has discovered this morning.

  ‘Hark, Leyton – here’s just one example. Nick Wilson’s gaffer – Jake Dickson – he were supposed to be in the fell race. That went off at 12.30pm and would have kept him busy for three-quarters of an hour. Except he never ran. He made himself scarce – he went into the back room of the Twa Tups. From there he could have seen Mary Wilson going to her car.’

  DS Leyton is literally wide eyed.

  ‘What – are you thinking he followed her, Guv?’

  But Skelgill shakes his head, and his expression is sour.

  ‘Leyton – he could have hitched a lift with her for all I know – but the point is, was he even interviewed?’

  DS Leyton glances up a little sheepishly at the stack of files that he has deposited on Skelgill’s tall grey metal cabinet.

  ‘I dunno, Guv. Mind you – if he were – it would be interesting to know what he said.’

  Skelgill remains far from enthused. Perhaps surprisingly he is more concerned about the general point than the specific.

  ‘If this had happened yesterday we’d want to know what folk did between 1pm and 2pm – chapter and verse, backed up by witnesses. While it was fresh in their minds we’d speak to every man Jack who knew her, and plenty that didn’t who turned up at the meet.’ He slumps heavily into his chair, his head flung back like a patient preparing for his dentist. ‘Twenty-odd years later – it’s the perfect excuse to be unreliable.’

  DS Leyton rests his stout forearms on his compatibly broad thighs and exhales deeply.

  ‘Except that geezer Dickson has remembered, Guv.’

  Skelgill allows the chair to spring forward. He grimaces pensively – his vague notion of the confession being a lesser evil passes fleetingly across his thoughts once more. He does not reply.

  His sergeant remains upbeat. He jerks a thumb above his shoulder.

  ‘I can start working through the files, Guv – see what we’ve got.’

  But Skelgill does not share his colleague’s enthusiasm.

  ‘I reckon I know the answer, Leyton – like Jones said, folk were asked what they saw, not what they were doing.’

  ‘But – Jake Dickson, Guv. I mean – if it’s at odds with what he’s just told you?’

  Skelgill nods reluctantly at his colleague. He suspects that, if Jake Dickson were even formally interviewed, he sheltered behind the assumption that he ran the fell race, and therefore was considered of little significance as a witness. That would have suited him; plainly he did not intend to advertise the fact that he chickened out of the event.
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br />   After a few moments’ silence, DS Leyton launches himself to his feet with an accompanying groan.

  ‘I’ll go for some cha, eh, Guv?’

  Skelgill does not object. He continues to sit broodingly, until after a few minutes his mobile phone bursts into life. The ringtone tells him it is DS Jones. Slowly, he reaches to tap the speaker button; and his greeting is monosyllabic.

  ‘Jones.’

  DS Jones hesitates – her intake of breath is audible – as though in his single word there are kaleidoscopic nuances to be decoded before she can appropriately respond. In the event she decides to skip formalities.

  ‘You’re not going to believe this, Guv.’

  At this moment DS Leyton reappears in the doorway bearing two mugs – he catches her words and hesitates, wondering if he should make a diplomatic retreat. But Skelgill beckons him impatiently.

  ‘Jones – hold your horses – here’s Leyton just come in. Start from the beginning.’

  DS Leyton reaches to pass Skelgill his tea, and leaning over the handset he greets his colleague.

  ‘Morning, Emma – or, afternoon, I should say. How’s rainy Manchester?’

  ‘Hi –’ She is about to extend the exchange – but then must think the better of it. ‘We have the DNA test results back on Nick Wilson.’

  DS Leyton gazes inquiringly at Skelgill.

  ‘What’s this, Guv?’

  Skelgill scowls, but – having taken a palliative sup of his steaming tea – he softens.

  ‘Leyton – last night – when I saw your bairn chomping on your lion mascot key fob. I thought, what if the DNA we’ve been chasing after belonged to Mary Wilson’s bairn?’

  Now DS Leyton is flabbergasted.

  ‘But – why didn’t they think of checking that?’

  Skelgill shrugs contrarily, but when he does not answer DS Jones offers some mitigation.

  ‘I guess they were set on a particular frame of reference. They were trying to match an adult male – not to eliminate unlikely or impossible suspects. They had limited resources and they were swamped. The processing of samples took days and even weeks – not hours like it does now. The comparison procedure was manual not computerised. In any case, it’s not Nick Wilson’s DNA.’

  ‘Not?’

  Now Skelgill jerks indignantly into life. He stands up and rests his hands on his hips, like a traffic policeman preparing to halt the flow but unsure of which direction to select. He had assumed she was about to tell him that his hunch has proved correct. Instead, she has casually tossed a spanner into the works.

  DS Leyton, meanwhile, has gathered his wits.

  ‘Whose DNA is it?’

  ‘It remains unidentified – there’s no match on the system – except –’

  For some reason DS Jones falters – and it takes a prompt from her fellow sergeant.

  ‘Go on, girl.’

  ‘Well, the lab didn’t just compare Nick Wilson’s sample with the key fob profile – they automatically cross-referenced it with the entire database collected for Operation Double Helix.’ Now she clears her throat. It is perhaps just a nervous affectation, but nonetheless it creates a small moment of suspense around what she is about to say. ‘The thing is – Nick Wilson’s biological father is not Aidan Wilson. It’s Sean Nicolson.’

  *

  Skelgill finds himself trying to remember exactly when do the leaves fall off the trees? Sure, there are leaves down, and some yellowing or browning, but the great bulk of deciduous matter has yet to be shed. He supposes it is the second half of October when ‘fall’ as the Americans call it actually gets into full swing. Right now, with sunlight filtering through a largely green canopy, he could be excused for believing it is still late summer. A little earlier the erratic weather produced a spike in the mercury that touched seventy, though it is cooling now as the sun slides from its modest zenith. But Mother Nature shows few signs of pulling in her horns. Striding from the Bowder Stone he has already heard a chiffchaff – too late to be a breeding bird, instead a swansong of sorts, before it sets off for its sub-Saharan wintering grounds; warm pockets of air buzz with insects – there is plenty for a hungry warbler to eat, to fatten up for his journey. And though the path-side vegetation is in retreat, resilient herbs are flowering: stinging nettles, red campion and wood woundwort. More autumnal, true, are the airborne seeds of rosebay willowherb that drift on the breeze; they possess the magical property of being able to pass through the dense forest unhindered, they are fairies, of course, and impossible to grab, and Skelgill has made half a dozen unsuccessful attempts.

  Such esoteric musings are pricked as he reaches the offshoot of the path that DS Leyton had noticed on their last visit. The gate is unlatched and half open and Skelgill frowns with concern. Just beyond is the worn platform of bare rock from which climbers practise their abseiling technique, Devil’s Lowp, they call it – though he has no idea if this is just a modern appellation, it being a colloquial rather than an historic name. Someone had joked about witches being made to jump, to ‘lowp’, to prove their innocence. He leans over carefully; the smooth slab is slick with lingering dew, and it might only be a hundred feet to the bottom, but that is more than enough to kill. As he stares down upon the tumble of fractured boulders beneath the sheer cliff, he feels the little pang of fear and excitement that an abseil entails – the moment of truth, the half-second between having one’s feet firmly rooted and the point of no return, the rush of adrenaline and relief that the equipment has taken the strain, that the rope, sheriff and harness are working in harmony. Free fall is averted; the climber is in control.

  Control seems a far cry from his present situation. And yet the disruption of control is something he specialises in – certainly the powers that be would paint him in such a light. He detected in his meeting with the Chief before setting out a palpable displeasure. While a neat pattern has presented itself in the Manchester confession, he insists on worrying at the edges to no obvious purpose. And yet – to give her her due – she had reversed (or, at least, postponed) any decision about curtailing the Cumbrian side of the investigation. Thus, while he was unable to present any concrete reason why this should be the case, he evidently succeeded in swaying her with his loose ends.

  It was strange that the subject of the leak did not come up. Yet he had felt unnerved by her demeanour of incisive perspicacity. It was like a forbearing schoolteacher giving an ink-stained pupil the benefit of the doubt in a case of an ink-pellet war perpetrated behind her back. Did she think it was he? That would be ridiculous.

  He backs away from the precipice and fastidiously closes the gate. It would take very little for a child or animal or even a careless adult to make a fatal mistake of navigation, even in broad daylight. His own path now takes him through the second gate, close to which twenty-two years ago Mary Wilson’s infamous knitted key fob was found. He emerges into the more sparsely wooded heathland of Cummacatta and picks up the all-but-indeterminate zigzags, which he introduced to his sergeants as the ‘obvious’ route to the Kissing Cave. Its vicinity is deserted now – all forensic examinations complete, tents dismantled, police tapes untied and rolled up – and he realises that it probably falls to him to tell the archaeologists they may return. He makes a mental note to contact Professor Jim Hartley. However, given their gruesome find, maybe they will not hurry back.

  But Skelgill’s final destination is neither Friggeshol nor its spousal Odinsgill, with its babbling beck. He scrambles across the rocky gully, and follows a faint but – to his outdoorsman’s eye – definite path, onwards and upwards through the woodland until he reaches a boundary wall. There is no stile, which makes him think the path is beaten by wild animals alone, and the sporadic stink of fox along the way would bear this out; likewise Mr Tod would have no difficulty in scaling the wall. For his part Skelgill finds toeholds that serve his purpose. He thumps down into marshy ground, sphagnum moss populated by bog asphodel and bell heather. Beyond, the open fellside rises towards the indisti
nct summit of Grange Fell – “an up-and-down tangled plateau” is how Wainwright saw it, of bracken, grass and heather, scattered rocky outcrops, and the occasional rowan bereft of leaves but hung with crimson berries.

  He gets his bearings and sets a course that will take him to Watendlath, site of an isolated farmstead that he could actually have driven to. But he has his own reasons for coming this way – he has no plans to reach the hamlet itself; instead he is absorbing the lie of the land. Besides, his primary goal is a moving target, and one that he is not guaranteed to find.

  As it turns out, only a few minutes have elapsed before these roles are reversed: he becomes the target, and a guided missile – black-and-white, like a miniature orca cutting through the undulating waves of vegetation – streaks towards him with uncanny precision. Lady! The little collie has picked up his scent and has remembered this is the kind human that does a good line in stroking behind the ears (and, truth be told, to a dog’s keen nose he has more than a whiff of canine about him; a double endorsement). Having subdued the unbridled greeting, Skelgill rises to see the silhouette of her master appear over the horizon of Jopplety How Moss. And Skelgill metaphorically kicks himself.

  How he could not have seen the resemblance between Sean Nicolson and Nick Wilson, at this moment seems extraordinary. In their meeting, while his faculties were diverted by the man’s answers, his subconscious was screaming at him to recognise the subtle signs, to join the dots. There was same tall, gaunt frame; the same unassuming mannerisms; the same broad fair head and pale, sad eyes.

  And now they close on one another. A different man, Skelgill thinks, and this could be like a conflagration of gunslingers – and certainly he would be on his guard for some dastardly move. But though he carries a working stick, Sean Nicolson’s demeanour reads like a book – and what Skelgill sees is resigned acquiescence, verging on relief. A lamb to the slaughter? Yet he surely cannot know why Skelgill has come looking for him.

  Perhaps for this reason, Skelgill finds himself procrastinating.

  ‘She might be daft as a brush, but she’s got some turn of speed on her.’