Detective Markham Mysteries Box Set

by Catherine Moloney

  The gloom on the others’ faces deepened at this caustic allusion to Superintendent Bretherton, or ‘blethering Bretherton’ as he was more popularly known.

  ‘Doyle.’

  The PC practically clicked his heels.

  ‘You’re with me. We’ll pay our respects to Audrey and see if anything useful comes our way from JP and Kavanagh. There’s bound to be other staff there as well, so we can take a closer look at Uttley, Sullivan and the rest of them while we’re about it. The killer has to be suffering a reaction after Snell … the strain of Audrey’s funeral could bring it all to the surface.’

  Noakes looked as if he wished he could swap assignments.

  ‘Er, libraries aren’t really my bag, Guv,’ he ventured.

  ‘High time you expanded your horizons then,’ the DI responded with the ghost of a smile as he followed Doyle to the door.

  Despite himself, Noakes was rather taken with Bromgrove Library, an imposing colonnaded Victorian building in the town centre.

  Burton, of course, was oohing and aahing over everything like some silly sixth former on a day out. Typical snowflake.

  Determined not to appear impressed, the DS nevertheless fell under the spell of the main reading room. The place was like something out of a fairy tale, he thought, taking in its circular interior with the domed ceiling and wrought iron spiral staircases leading to rows and rows of old oak shelves. Just seeing the regiments of books lined up behind gilt balustrades gave him a feeling of veneration for learning. Looking round at all the silent scholars hunched over vast tomes under a huge ormolu clock, it was all vast and echoey, like being in church. You’d be afraid to blow your nose in case the sound disturbed someone.

  It was with a feeling of some disappointment, therefore, that Noakes followed Burton through the reading room to an undistinguished linoleum-floored modern complex signposted Local Records whose airlessness, the DC explained earnestly, was down to the archives needing to be temperature-con-trolled. Like sodding Center Parcs, he thought crossly.

  His stomach gave a rumble.

  ‘’Appen I can leave you to get started,’ he said with his best winning manner, observing the way his colleague was rapturously drinking in her surroundings. ‘There’s a Costa Coffee back there an’ I missed out on elevenses.’

  ‘OK,’ came the surprisingly amiable response. ‘I’ll ask Miss Todd to set us up on the microfilm readers.’ Burton gestured to a desiccated looking woman with cropped hair and a dreary plaid skirt who was eyeing them with a gimlet stare.

  ‘You do that, luv,’ he said effusively. ‘I’ll be back in a tick. Once I’ve fired up the old carburettor.’

  With any luck Miss Congeniality over there would give them a hand. She looked the upright citizen type. In the meantime, he’d have a cuppa. They’d likely be here most of the day and the DI wouldn’t want him going under for want of sustenance. Maybe there’d be time for another peep at that reading room too. Just cos he hadn’t been to college didn’t mean he couldn’t appreciate the finer things in life.

  Noakes sidled towards the door.

  ‘Glad you could join us, Sergeant,’ said Miss Todd on Noakes’s return some three quarters of an hour later. She sounded distinctly nettled.

  Time to pour oil on troubled waters.

  ‘Lost track of time looking round the reading room, luv. Hadn’t realized it was such a treasure trove. That History of Magic display’s champion.’

  Bingo. The battle-axe bestowed an approving smile upon him.

  ‘Well, our younger visitors were always commenting that the architecture reminded them of Harry Potter, so it seemed appropriate to offer something about local traditions and tales from the past. We’ll be doing Food Through the Ages next.’

  ‘Right up your street, Sarge,’ Burton observed with a knowing look.

  Noakes hastily changed the subject.

  ‘How’s it going with the trawl, then?’ he enquired, gesturing at a pile of printouts.

  Burton wrinkled her nose.

  ‘Thanks to Miss Todd’s indexing skills, better than I’d hoped.’

  The librarian retreated to a discreet distance, clearly well pleased with this encomium.

  Lowering her voice, Burton continued, ‘I’m pulling any school stuff that sounds vaguely juicy – sacked teachers, staff on the fiddle, cheating, bullying … whatever dirt I can dig up, basically.’

  Noakes looked warily at the microfilm reader next to Burton’s. Following his glance, the DC grinned.

  ‘Nah, Sarge, I’ll be quicker doing it myself. But why don’t you have a look through the printouts – see if anything jumps out. You’ve got more local knowledge, so you’ll likely join the dots quicker than me.’

  ‘Fair enough.’ Noakes assumed an attitude of poker-faced impenetrability, as befitted a custodian of community secrets. Settling his ample buttocks on a low-slung leather chair to the side of the microfilm readers, he began to scan the pile of perforated sheets.

  For a while, silence reigned in their corner of the room, broken only by the soft whirr of microfilm reels and an intermittent juddering of the printer. From time to time, Burton cast an amused glance at Noakes who, increasingly absorbed in his task, looked for all the world like an earnest amateur historian.

  ‘Lift a few stones and you wouldn’t believe what crawls out.’

  The DS sounded genuinely outraged.

  ‘If it’s not pervy teachers screwing around with students, it’s kids dealing drugs or topping themselves cos of bullying,’ he sputtered. ‘All I can say is I’m glad my Natalie’s done with education.’

  Noticing Miss Todd’s sudden air of alert attention, he lowered his voice a fraction.

  ‘Seriously, though, it makes you think. My schooldays were like something out of Enid Blyton compared with this lot.’

  Despite the attempt at nonchalance, it sounded curiously like a cry for help.

  ‘Maybe if they focused on the three Rs instead of fannying around with all this trendy nonsense …’ the DS grouched, gesturing impotently with the sheaf of papers.

  ‘Too late to stuff that genie back in the bottle, Sarge.’ Burton spoke mildly, surprised to feel an unexpected spasm of pity for her cantankerous colleague under whose feet the tectonic plates were shifting.

  The DC leaned back in her chair, trying to ignore the nagging ache in her lower back.

  ‘Anything in particular grab you?’ she enquired.

  ‘Well, there’s a couple of stories about bullying at Cothill,’ Noakes replied, thumbing through the stash. ‘I noticed them cos me an’ the missus almost sent Natalie there. Went to Open Day an’ all.’ He looked belligerently at Burton as though daring her to challenge this. ‘We could afford it,’ he continued defensively, ‘but it just didn’t feel right. Very swanky, but the kids were right snotty an’ the head … well, he was a real poser … megawatt smile – the mums loved it – but dead insincere underneath.’ He clenched his jaw. ‘I caught him sneering at Muriel when he thought she couldn’t see. But I saw him. I don’t mind anyone having a pop at me, but no-one laughs at my missus.’

  Noakes should have sounded ridiculous but somehow didn’t. Seeing only respectful sympathy in Burton’s face, he added more temperately, ‘One of the stories about Cothill says there was a seventeen-year-old student who killed himself. Single-parent family an’ the kid was there on a scholarship. It was down to bullying. The lad left a diary an’ it all came out. The form tutor turned a blind eye, apparently.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘Oh, there was an investigation but the school decided no-one was to blame.’

  ‘Very convenient.’

  ‘Yeah. But get this,’ Noakes’s voice swelled with admiration, ‘the lad’s mum wasn’t having any of it. Got up at the inquest and called the form tutor a douchebag. Really went for the whole lot of ’em, the poor cow. Said that if the head wasn’t so busy ass-kissing, he’d have noticed what was going on.’

  ‘Good for her.’ Burton knew which si
de she was on. ‘When did all this happen?’

  ‘About fifteen years or so. There was a follow up when the mum died suddenly. A relative told the Gazette she died of a broken heart an’ the staff at Cothill had blood on their hands.’

  ‘God, how awful.’ Burton’s face looked pinched and drawn at the grim recital.

  ‘Yeah.’ Noakes nodded solemnly. ‘Ferndean’s pretty gross too. Three teachers struck off in the last five years for,’ he air quoted savagely, ‘inappropriate relationships. An’ before that there was a hoo-ha about the head having it off with one of the governors. Turned out he’d been giving her money out of school funds. An’ that’s not all—’

  Burton interrupted before Noakes could embark on a litany of iniquities.

  ‘Anything in there about Hope, Sarge?’

  Like a witch-finder baulked of his prey, Noakes abandoned the indictment against Ferndean with some reluctance.

  ‘Nowt to speak of,’ he replied. ‘Just summat about when an exams officer lost a set of GCSE papers an’ the parents were creating about it.’

  Burton’s eyes throbbed with squinting at microfilm slides. A blinding headache was just around the corner.

  ‘C’mon,’ she said wearily. ‘I’ll just do this last batch. Miss Todd said she’ll run some checks too if we don’t get finished today.’

  Noakes’s nose was already deep in the pile of printouts. At some level, reflected Burton, she and the DS had bonded over their abortive auto-da-fé.

  Perhaps, she concluded with a rueful smile, that was precisely what Markham had intended.

  By five o’clock, the team had reconvened in their office at Hope. Outside it was getting dark, a chill wind wuthering mournfully around the building.

  The DI looked all done in, Noakes thought as he watched his guv’nor from over the rim of an outsize Bart Simpson mug. Burton was wolfing nurofen tablets like smarties, while Doyle flicked desultorily through a notebook between picking his blackheads.

  Markham was recalling Audrey’s funeral service. Crenellated and gothic from the outside, the church’s long narrow interior was cheerless as a barn with just one stained glass window at the far end. A vaulted ceiling in lurid vermilion, crisscrossed with white rafters, failed to suggest celestial realms to Markham, being more evocative of hell fire.

  Unlike the huge turnout for Ashley Dean, the congregation for Audrey had comprised a dispiriting huddle in the front three pews. And of these, most appeared to be her colleagues from Hope. It was so cold that their breath hung in the air.

  Matthew Sullivan had held aloof from Markham, but the DI noted that Harry Mountfield appeared to be propping him up. The drama teacher’s eyes seemed to look inward at some private agony, so that it felt like a violation to spy on him.

  JP’s appearance too seemed testament to some deep-seated anguish, his eyes bloodshot behind the heavy black-rimmed spectacles and the scrawny body more tadpole-like than ever. The number two haircut was dank with sweat and an ill-fitting Man at C&A suit failed to disguise the fact that he had lost an alarming amount of weight. Was it grief or remorse that had wreaked such havoc on the man, Markham wondered. Helen Kavanagh shadowed Palmer like a prison warder, leaving no opportunity for conversation after the service. Depressingly, the rubicund officiating clergyman referred to Audrey as ‘Anne’ throughout, delivering a boilerplate address which served only to highlight the tenuousness of the connection between minister and congregation.

  Markham and Olivia, attended by Doyle, both followed the little cortege to Bromgrove South Crematorium, a tiny mouse-hole of a building which somehow suited the inoffensive character of the deceased. Their bouquet of violets was one of just two floral tributes.

  As the still, silent coffin inched towards the archway which led to the furnace and the chimney, Markham bowed his head. I’m so sorry, Audrey, he said over and over, I’m so sorry.

  There was no wake. After dropping Olivia back at The Sweepstakes, Markham and Doyle proceeded to the Newman and an endless round of interviews.

  Pointless. All utterly pointless. But enough to keep the gold braid mob at bay.

  Markham dragged himself back to the present. ‘Anything useful in the archives, Noakes?’

  ‘Burton did well, Guv,’ came the gruff response.

  The DI’s lips quirked disbelievingly at this indication of détente, but all he said was, ‘Go on.’

  ‘Well, she got most of the school stuff out of the library database or watchamacallit.’

  ‘Excellent.’

  ‘We’ve picked out a selection of articles for you, sir.’ Burton took over, her headache forgotten. ‘The biggest headlines from the last twenty years or so.’

  She handed Markham a sheaf of papers with sections highlighted in different colours.

  As she did so, he felt something like a swift electric shock.

  The DC looked up at him wonderingly.

  ‘We’re going to stop this evil in its tracks,’ he said. ‘I want you to go home now. But be ready to meet here tomorrow at eight o’clock sharp. I’m going to look at these archive records tonight, and we’ll review them tomorrow. It’s half term next week, so no students underfoot, but staff will be in and out from Monday. We’ve got the weekend to come up with something.’

  Nothing loath, Burton and Doyle headed for the car park.

  ‘You too, Noakesy,’ Markham urged when the DS seemed inclined to linger. ‘How do you think Burton’s shaping up?’ he could not resist asking.

  ‘She’s not totally useless,’ came the rejoinder as Noakes shuffled on his disreputable parka. ‘Got a good head on her shoulders once you get past all that university nonsense.’

  It was the flag of truce.

  As he switched off lights and locked doors, Markham was at once struck by the building’s eerie silence. Previously, even in the absence of Hope’s students, there had been a background hum – the bustle of the scholastic anthill. Now that was hushed as if it had never been.

  This hinterland had been Jim Snell’s world.

  Until the golem came for him.

  Markham strode for the foyer without looking back, fingering his bundle of papers as though it was a talisman.

  This is it, he told himself. The last throw of the dice.

  13

  Shadows from the Past

  ‘SO FINALLY, IT’S PEACE in our time!’

  Markham chuckled reminiscently as he described the rapprochement between Noakes and Kate Burton.

  By tacit consent, he and Olivia had shelved the subject of the investigation during supper, talking in a desultory fashion about other things, though with a burning consciousness of the press cuttings in Markham’s study.

  ‘Well, I know you can’t do without Noakes,’ Olivia remarked indulgently, ‘and I’ve always had a soft spot for him, though he’s a strange mixture … childlike, cunning and comforting all at once.’

  ‘Burton likely dismissed him out of hand as an uncouth philistine. And God knows the old villain plays up to that image for all he’s worth. But he’s full of surprises.’ He laughed again. ‘D’you know he’s a leading light of the Silhouette Ballroom Club?’

  ‘Noakes!’

  ‘The very same. Heard it at the gym from another DI. Apparently, he’s a demon on the dance floor.’

  ‘Now that would be worth seeing.’ Olivia’s eyes sparkled with mischief. ‘Can you imagine him and Muriel doing the pasodoble?’

  ‘Oh, she got him into it, apparently. They’re regulars on the exhibition circuit. Take it very seriously.’

  ‘Well, just when you think you know someone …’

  A shadow fell across Olivia’s face at the thought that there might be someone close at hand whom she had never truly known at all. A lost soul. Like a dark continent – one of those huge desolate tracts on ancient maps of the world that medievalists inscribed with the words Hic Sent Dracones. Here be dragons.

  Catching sight of his girlfriend’s expression, Markham said, ‘We’re very close now, Liv, I can
feel it.’ Pouring himself another cup of coffee, he added urgently, ‘I can’t shake the feeling that we’re on the edge of a breakthrough. When Burton gave me those press cuttings, I had this superstitious feeling that the key to the case lay right there, buried somewhere amongst all the headlines and gossip.’

  ‘Time to find out, then!’ Olivia met his eyes bravely. ‘May I go through them with you? Please, Gil. Another pair of eyes and all that.’

  ‘Of course. Let’s take our drinks through to the study.’

  In Markham’s study, Olivia hastily closed the curtains against the darkness, as though to barricade the room against night-time demons. Switching on the anglepoise lamp on the desk, and drawing up a second chair, she solemnly divided the press cuttings between them. Side by side in silence, they perused headlines, sidebars and articles for anything that seemed just a hair off-centre.

  ‘Oh, I’ve found the story you said Noakes was up in arms about,’ Olivia announced after a quarter of an hour’s careful inspection.

  ‘Which one was that?’ Markham enquired absently.

  ‘That one about Cothill House. Noakes said he’d been thinking about it for Natalie but didn’t like the way the head poked fun at Muriel, remember?’

  ‘Oh, yes. Wasn’t there something about bullying and a suicide?’

  Suddenly, Olivia snatched up the printout and studied it intently. ‘My goodness, there’s Harry Mountfield!’ She squinted doubtfully and then said, ‘No, I must have got it wrong – different name – but it looks awfully like him … could almost be his twin.’

  Markham felt as though blood vessels had burst and flooded into his brain.

  He kept his voice steady.

  ‘Show me, Liv.’

  ‘It’s a really grainy photo. The sixth form are at the top with the littlies at the front.’

  She slid her finger along the paper.