Murder at the Meet

by Bruce Beckham

  Skelgill makes an indeterminate noise in his throat. His sergeant’s manoeuvring of his precious ‘old jam jar’ up the rising and rutted track towards Slatterdale Rigg in part distracts him. But now he produces a response.

  ‘Least we won’t need his permission to re-test his DNA.’

  DS Leyton glances across at his superior but then makes a face of apology as they instantly hit a pothole. Skelgill issues an expletive that requires a plea of mitigation before his sergeant can return to the thread of their conversation.

  ‘You reckon it’ll match, Guv?’

  ‘I’m struggling to doubt it – let’s see what we find here. Wait – stop!’

  They are just passing the car graveyard. The sun has emerged from behind a band of cloud, highlighting more obviously the different colours of the abandoned vehicles.

  They get out. The wrecks are arranged in two rows, and the detectives fan out, like merchants searching for particular items of scrap.

  Skelgill stalks over to a black pick-up, wheels removed, on piles of rocks. He examines the registration plate – it is about ten years old – but it looks to be the vehicle most recently dumped here. He squeezes around to the front – and his features crease in alarm. In the bonnet is a sizable indentation.

  ‘Leyton – come and see this.’

  But DS Leyton responds in kind.

  ‘Guv – come and see this.’

  There is something in his colleague’s intonation that prompts Skelgill to allow DS Leyton’s request to countermand his own.

  His sergeant has dragged a rotten tarpaulin off a vehicle that is half sunken in what looks like a slurry pit.

  Revealed is a small red car, severely rusted and coated in grime and the accumulation of the activities of farmyard vermin.

  Skelgill is shocked, such that he makes a statement that he knows cannot be correct.

  ‘It’s Mary Wilson’s.’

  But DS Leyton is shaking his head.

  ‘It’s a different reg, Guv. But it could have been the car that was seen being driven like crazy on the day she went missing.’ He stretches out an arm. ‘Look – the old tax disc – it’s the right year.’

  Skelgill grimaces and jerks a thumb over his shoulder.

  ‘And I reckon that’s our black pick-up.’

  DS Leyton follows his superior’s indication to stare at the other vehicle. After a moment he speaks.

  ‘Where do you want to look, Guv? In the house?’

  Skelgill shakes his head.

  ‘In time, aye. But while it’s still light I want to see what’s in that barn.’

  ‘Think we’ll find his keys?’

  ‘Probably not.’

  When DS Leyton offers to stop for this reason, for a search of the farmhouse, Skelgill ushers him past and directs him to reverse up to the barn entrance. He takes a rope from his flatbed and clips one hook onto the chain that secures the double door and the other onto his tow bar. He calls out.

  ‘There you go, Leyton. Have fun.’

  DS Leyton has his window down.

  ‘I better take it steady, eh – build up the pressure?’

  But Skelgill seems to think otherwise.

  ‘Remember the limpet, Leyton.’

  DS Leyton nods phlegmatically – and with a sudden roar of the engine he lets out the clutch and Skelgill’s car leaps forward, not breaking the iron shackle, but explosively ripping the two sides of the barn door off its hinges.

  Skelgill wastes no time in pulling a powerful Lenser torch from his jacket and marching into the newly exposed void.

  He has to admit that his first reaction is one of relief. On the face of it, at least, there is nothing amiss – this ancient stone building, for centuries the local slaughterhouse, bears no signs of recent horrors, neither animal nor, as was his worst fear, human.

  But after a search amongst the dust and the dumped equipment he does find something of an eye-catching nature. Flashing red and white and metallic, on the sill of a boarded-up slit window, stands a Peak Freans biscuit tin, the sort of thing that would be seen on a table of bric-a-brac in an antiques shop. Modest as such, it is distinctive for its lack of dust. Skelgill pulls on a pair of nitrile gloves and with his lock-knife prises up the hinged lid, avoiding any unnecessary contact. He flips back the lid – and raises his torch.

  And there is the magenta scarf.

  Skelgill is still holding it up, staring with wonderment in the torchlight, like he has some holy grail as his sergeant shuffles tentatively alongside him. They do not speak for a while, and when they do, DS Leyton makes an altogether different conversation, as though the scarf is simply too sacred to refer to.

  ‘Those dogs are going ape, Guv. They didn’t like us ripping the doors off. That’s why I hung back – I’ve phoned the RSPCA to get someone up here who knows what they’re doing.’

  Skelgill does not answer. He directs his torch back into the tin and peers inside.

  ‘There’s Fiat keys an’ all, Leyton – her missing keys.’

  DS Leyton now leans forward.

  ‘And what else is that, Guv?’

  ‘Looks like ladies’ underwear. Quite a few pieces.’

  DS Leyton seems now for the first time to become possessed by the fear that has secretly haunted Skelgill for the past fortnight.

  ‘Jeez, Guv – what if there’s more victims?’

  ‘Leyton – I’m hoping Jean Tyson will be able to identify these. I’d rather think that at the moment.’

  19. CASTING OFF

  Friday noon, Debs’ Farm Cafe

  ‘That’s the DNA test results in – they confirm the match between Patrick Pearson and the original sample from Mary Wilson’s knitted key fob. Also there are traces of his DNA on the scarf – it would seem he recently handled it. They’re still testing the other items.’

  DS Jones seems a little breathless; the fresh air – the breeze and the rain – has brought an extra flush of colour to her cheeks and the tip of her nose. She gives an involuntarily shiver as she slips off her jacket and wraps it around the back of her chair. Skelgill notices her sylphlike elegance as she resumes her seat. They had all but finished their scones before she left – but she has a corner remaining and she pops it into her mouth. He watches reflectively as she flicks her tongue over her top lip to catch a dab of clotted cream.

  He is relieved to have her back in his fold. She must be drained from her trip to Manchester – and it cannot have been easy travelling north with a cranky DI Smart, his press conference abandoned, his guns spiked by dramatic events in ‘sleepy Borrowdale’. Now his sergeant is in her element, multi-tasking, coordinating various operations and already sketching out the skeleton of the report they must submit to the Public Prosecutor. On this account, he can see that DS Leyton shares his relief.

  The constabulary has commandeered the lounge bar of the Twa Tups as an incident room and convenient location for interviewing the locals; but Skelgill has led his colleagues to take elevenses at the nearby rustic café. He thinks the pub should stick to what it does best, serving ale. But their change of venue has necessitated that DS Jones escape the thick walls of the old converted barn to get sufficient of a phone signal to pick up this latest news, the final confirmation that they have awaited.

  ‘Also very interesting – we’ve identified where ‘Patrick Pearson’ took his original DNA test.’ DS Jones makes quotation marks in mid air with her fingertips to bracket the man’s name. ‘It was at the testing unit at Keswick. Why would he drive past the one in the village to go to another seven miles away?’

  The two males are nodding – for this is a rhetorical question to which they all know the answer. DS Leyton anyway supplies it.

  ‘Less chance that the local bobby on the door would recognise his stooge Harry Nelson. If the nurses had called out “Patrick Pearson” and that squirt had got up to give a blood sample instead of the seven-foot hulk – he’d have stood out like a sore thumb to anyone who vaguely knew Pearson.’

 
DS Jones is nodding.

  ‘We’ve retrieved the ID documents from the archives. Apparently it’s quite clear from the photocopy of Patrick Pearson’s passport that it had been tampered with. The photograph of Harry Nelson that had been inserted was crooked, and the film that covers it was creased.’

  There are raised eyebrows, but no one offers recriminations. It was most likely a nurse drafted in from outside the area that was given the job of registering the men volunteering their samples. Who would have imagined that one of them was an imposter?

  Skelgill is at this very moment berating himself for a not dissimilar oversight. He has the shepherds’ meet leaflet borrowed from his mother’s album spread out on the table before him, and now he stares at it ruefully. What at first glance was an innocuous line of type subsumed by the rest of the densely printed page now seems to shine out like the neon lights of Soho: “For your evening’s entertainment in the Twa Tups, back by popular demand – Fingerpicking Jazz with local maestro Patrick ‘Pick’ Pearson.”

  DS Jones sees that he is discomfited.

  ‘What’s bothering you, Guv?’

  Skelgill looks up sharply. He gestures with a backhanded flick of frustration at the sheet.

  ‘His nickname – Pick Pearson – I heard enough people call him Pick. I should have sussed out the music connection. To think I’ve been walking round with this clue in my pocket. And all along there’s been a photograph on the pub wall crying out for attention.’

  DS Leyton is listening apprehensively – wondering why his superior is not tarring him with this same brush, as instigator of the jazz theory.

  ‘But, Guv – we weren’t on that track in the first place. There was no indication when we visited his farm – he looked like the last person you can imagine with a guitar in his hands. I thought they called him Pick because it maybe had something to do with a pickaxe or a pitchfork, or he picked his nose – or maybe nothing at all. I was at school with a kid we all called ‘Panner’ – no connection to pans that anyone knew of, old man wasn’t an ironmonger, old lady wasn’t a cook – but his surname was Parker, so it just sounded neat.’

  And now DS Jones joins to further mitigate her superior’s self-reproach.

  ‘It didn’t cost anything. I mean – maybe Jean Tyson was at a small risk – but at least you kept her safe. No one else was harmed by you not acting faster.’

  Skelgill scowls belligerently.

  It is not strictly true that no one else was harmed. Pick Pearson died. And, though the evidence that would surely have convicted him has since swept like an avalanche from the cliffs of Great End, he feels a pang of regret that he won’t see that particular job done in a court of law. In some respects, via his one-hundred-foot descent from Devil’s Lowp, Patrick Pearson had evaded justice.

  Neither is it strictly true to suggest that the risk to Jean Tyson was merely ‘small’. For his colleague to make this assessment seems to him one massive understatement. In her defence, DS Jones was not there at the time. She cannot have appreciated the sudden unravelling of events, the escalation of tension – indeed recalling it with hindsight makes Skelgill all the more fearful. Though Jean Tyson has denied it, he is now convinced that the person DS Leyton had suspected to be loitering in the front room at her cottage was Pick Pearson. He would have overheard her being questioned about the guitar, and Aidan Wilson’s proclivities with regard to jazz. He probably gave her a lift to the shepherds’ meet. Certainly he drove her to walk the dog in Cummacatta – the old Volvo belonged to him, not her. And thus Skelgill doubts the other aspects of her statement. That it was Pick Pearson’s suggestion to go down in the woods. What if it had been hers? The natural assumption is that it became plain to the eavesdropping Pick Pearson that the police were closing in upon him – and that, for the time being, out of some misguided loyalty Jean Tyson was covering for him; but for how long could she be trusted? However, what if it the penny had not so much dropped for him, as for her? That the facts implicit in DS Leyton’s questions were the final confirmation she needed of a suspicion she had long harboured? And even if it had not been her suggestion to go to the woods, perhaps she willingly went along with it – understanding she was at risk, but also knowing that she could take him by surprise.

  Skelgill has not elaborated upon his fleeting encounter with Jean Tyson – or, at least, his reading of her dogged silence: a scene now etched in his mind – a picture that speaks ten thousand words. It tells a tale at odds with her subsequent statement: that Pick Pearson asked her at the shepherds’ meet if they could talk in private about something; that he suggested they use the excuse of taking the dog down to the Bowder Stone; that they had done this; that they had reached Devil’s Lowp; that the gate had been left open, as was often the case; that he had gone through – she had cautioned against it – and the dog had tripped him!

  Skelgill is reminded of her words on their first meeting at her cottage, she diminutive and dour, finally coming to terms with what had happened to her beloved Mary. “A mother can bide her time.” He realises now he has accepted the controversial conclusion to which his instincts jumped on the shadowy path so close to where Mary Wilson disappeared – that village justice had been served in Cummacatta Wood. There is no proof – and perhaps it does not matter – for the case against Pick Pearson is becoming incontrovertible. With a visible effort, he pulls himself together.

  ‘What else have we got, then? Let’s recap before we commit this to paper.’

  He directs this question to DS Leyton.

  ‘Ah, well, Guv – the vehicle inspection unit have produced a preliminary assessment of that black pick-up. The first indications are that it is most likely human impact damage – the dents rarely stretch so far up the bonnet if it’s an animal, even a big deer. They’ll be able to compare the pattern to the recorded injuries suffered by Harry Nelson. And they’re hopeful they might get some DNA – they’re doing a blood spatter analysis on the grille and the radiator, where it could have become baked on.’

  Skelgill is nodding earnestly; DS Leyton continues.

  ‘Nick Wilson’s guitar appears to be the one that Patrick Pearson was holding in the photograph in the Twa Tups. Forensics are doing some enlargements to confirm – there’ll be a unique pattern of markings on the scratch plate. And they found a good fingerprint just inside the sound hole where it’s never been cleaned – a match for Patrick Pearson.’

  DS Jones is eager to understand the background to this aspect of the case.

  ‘So what happened – how did Nick Wilson end up with the guitar?’

  DS Leyton looks to Skelgill to elaborate. He raises his hands in an attitude of prayer, resting his elbows on the table and pressing his index fingers to his lips. It is almost as though he is debating with himself whether it is an opinion he wishes to divulge. Then he takes a deep breath and begins to speak, his gaze directed between his two colleagues.

  ‘As far as the guitar’s concerned, maybe when he couldn’t play any more – when his arthritis got too bad – I reckon Pick Pearson gave it to young Nick – but not directly, not in person. Perhaps it was to impress Jean Tyson. But I reckon she told the kid it was a Christmas present from his dad – to make the poor devil feel better. And maybe Pick Pearson went along with it because he was playing a long hand.’

  Skelgill’s colleagues nod in unison, their expressions those of concern. DS Leyton puts into words perhaps what they are both thinking.

  ‘That gives me the creeps, Guv – the thought of that monster prowling about in the dark – peeping Tom – half-inching their underwear.’

  DS Jones is quick to interject.

  ‘What do you think about that, Guv?’

  Now Skelgill stares broodingly at his empty tea plate. Jean Tyson has identified the magenta scarf found at Slatterdale Rigg as identical to the one Mary Wilson wore on the day of her disappearance. As far as she is concerned, it is Mary’s scarf. The underwear that was with it, she has grudgingly admitted probably belonged to Mary
, and that, yes, they had suffered occasional losses from their washing line. But she has pointedly refused to be drawn on any speculation concerning Pick Pearson, such as that he harboured some kind of obsession for Mary – or indeed herself. Skelgill finds himself curiously predisposed towards her reticence – he can only put it down to his local roots – despite his niggling scepticism of the dog’s reported role in Pick Pearson’s downfall.

  ‘Guv?’

  Skelgill starts from his reverie.

  ‘Aye – I shouldn’t be surprised if he were trying to get his feet under the table at one time. There’s Jean Tyson – a widow – and Mary, growing up to be an attractive young woman. He lives just up the dale, passing by regularly; there’s always an excuse to drop in.’

  DS Jones is nodding, and she has a contribution to make.

  ‘When you think about Mary – Mary Tyson as she was – that she got herself hitched so young with Aidan Wilson. Maybe there was an element of self-protection – that she felt uncomfortable with Patrick Pearson’s neighbourliness.’

  Skelgill recalls the reaction of Jean Tyson – when on their first meeting he asked her what must have seemed a crazy question – who could have murdered Mary? And yet she had involuntarily glanced at the open top half of her back door – was it often darkened by the unwelcome shadow of Pick Pearson? Even if this were something that Jean Tyson tried to discourage (or perhaps she had made the mistake of not doing so), it would have been difficult having a giant of a man passing and no husband present to deter such attention. And maybe she was flattered – until such times as he began to show an unhealthy interest in Mary. And then later when Mary was gone – at his hands – did he continue to hang around – to ingratiate himself by encouraging the boy? Jean Tyson had opined that the culprit might enact this very tactic.

  DS Leyton has a further point to add.

  ‘Guv – the print on the map. I reckon you were spot on. That was Patrick Pearson’s an’ all. Nick Wilson said he took the maps from his gran’s house when he moved to the caravan.’