Detective Markham Mysteries Box Set

by Catherine Moloney

  ‘Jus’ some crumbly old tombs,’ Noakes sniffed. ‘Look at all them weeds. You’d think someone could make a bit of an effort … show some respect, like.’

  Markham bent down to take a closer look. ‘I think someone may have had a go at tidying up … there’s some fresh grouting—’

  ‘Hey there! Yoo-hoo!’

  Yoo-hoo. Noakes sniggered as the Seacombes came plunging across the field towards them, Mary Seacombe’s untidy grey bun coming loose from its moorings in her hurry to waylay them.

  ‘Hello there.’ Markham shot the DS a repressive look. ‘Quaint little graveyard this. Hope you didn’t mind us taking a quick look.’

  A shadow passed across Bob Seacombe’s bluff weathered face, so fleeting that it was barely discernible except to Markham who watched the couple closely.

  ‘Not at all, Inspector. It’s just that the hospital asked us to keep this field out of bounds to visitors … with it being consecrated ground, you see.’ The man twisted his striped neckerchief awkwardly. ‘I should’ve put up a notice or something, but hardly anyone ever comes.’

  Too busy watching bloody blue tits, thought Noakes, allowing himself an inner eye roll.

  ‘No worries, Mr Seacombe.’ Markham was very smooth. ‘High time for us to be making tracks.’ On the way back to the reception area, he kept up a stream of light inconsequential chat.

  ‘Would you like to sign the visitors’ book?’ sang out Mrs Seacombe. ‘It’s a bit of an event for us what with not seeing anyone from one month to the next … if you don’t count Coastal Care …’ Observing Noakes’s refractory expression, her voice trailed away. ‘Or maybe you can’t … I mean, if it’s confidential …’

  The DI came to her rescue. ‘Delighted, Mrs Seacombe,’ he said expansively. He signed with a flourish before flipping through the pages of the morocco-bound book and running his eyes down the blotted columns with every appearance of interest, though his mind was now far away from Seacrest and back at the Newman. Ever the gentleman, no-one save the closest observer could have detected that Markham now begrudged every minute spent lingering at the front desk.

  When they were safely back in the car, he turned to the DS. ‘Well, I was beginning to feel my crystal ball moment was a complete waste of time, but the Seacombes’ reaction when we were looking at that burial site tells me we’re onto something.’

  ‘Yeah, reckon there’s something we weren’t supposed to see.’

  ‘Those vaults had been tampered with at some point.’ Markham’s face was grim. ‘I want to know who and why.’ Then he smiled at his companion. ‘We’ll be coming back to the seaside before this investigation is very much older, Noakes, once we’ve got all our ducks in a row.’

  ‘An’ I’m twenty squids up after last night, Guv,’ the DS carolled. ‘Seeing as I’m flush,’ the DS added with ferrety glee, ‘I’ll spring for the fish and chips.’

  ‘So it wasn’t a total dead loss in the end, Liv.’

  Late afternoon, but the lights were on in the living room of their flat as Markham concluded his account.

  Olivia smiled. ‘Sounds as if George had a good time.’

  Noakes had declined the invitation to come in, shifting from one foot to another and smiling goofily as she accused him of playing hooky and leading her boyfriend astray. Eventually, the DS declared, ‘Muriel does hot pot Fridays, so I’d best be going.’ Patting his jacket pocket with its precious cargo of postcards showing Sandringham through the seasons, he plodded off with one yearning backwards glance.

  ‘I suspect Noakesy’s childhood wasn’t exactly Swallows and Amazons, so after the Seacrest debacle we took a stroll along Holkham Bay.’ He rolled his eyes. ‘It was all I could do to stop him going for a paddle.’

  Olivia shot him a shrewd glance as he sank into his favourite armchair. Passing him a black coffee, she asked, ‘Would you like a shot of something in that?’

  ‘Better not.’ He sighed. ‘I need to make tracks soon and get back to the Newman. See what Kate Burton’s got for me.’

  ‘Poor Kate, stuck at base.’ Olivia made a mock pout. ‘You’ll really have to give her an away day too, you know, otherwise there’ll be complaints that George gets all the jollies.’

  ‘Oh, I guarantee she’ll be sunk with pure bliss in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.’ He laughed mirthlessly. ‘Boning up even as we speak.’ He shifted restlessly. ‘I can’t help feeling that there was something right under my nose at Seacrest and I missed it … something I should have spotted but didn’t … something that slipped away from me.’

  ‘You’re tired,’ Olivia said matter-of-factly. ‘Nothing that a few bouts at Dirty Dickerson’s won’t sort.’

  ‘It’s Doggie, not Dirty, though come to think of it your nickname’s a better fit.’

  ‘What was Seacrest like, Gil?’ With proud sensitivity, she added, ‘You know I don’t pry, but it might help to talk.’

  ‘Oh, my love.’ There was tenderness in Markham’s voice. ‘That’s just it … I’d built the place up in my mind, but in the end, it was just a collection of pathetic huts like a downmarket caravan site.’

  ‘Something about it got to you, though.’

  ‘Well, there was this path that wound along by the huts. I just had the strongest sensation of dread … a sort of unreasoning terror as if something really evil was waiting there….’

  ‘A troll under the bridge.’ Olivia stroked his arm. ‘Like in the fairy story The Three Billy Goats Gruff.’

  Her light-hearted comment punctured the tension.

  ‘Well, the setting was Brothers Grimm, no doubt about that.’ Markham regarded her indulgently. ‘Wild and lonesome. But there weren’t any trolls about, just two elderly ornithologists.’ He told her about the Seacombes. ‘Noakes was terrified they were going to thrust a pair of binoculars at him. You should have seen his face when they started talking about their bird hide … thought he was going to be dragooned up the sand dunes for a spot of twitching. He couldn’t get out of there fast enough. It was much better down on Holkham Bay.’

  Olivia chuckled. Then a thought struck her. ‘So, they didn’t know anything about patients coming to Seacrest for respite care or self-catering breaks?’

  ‘It petered out before their time, apparently. They assumed it was down to local authority cost-cutting.’

  ‘What about the caretakers who were there before them? I mean, there must’ve been other staff who could tell you something.’

  ‘I’ll be putting Doyle onto that, but I’m not optimistic.’ Markham frowned. ‘Anonymous agency staff, difficult to trace … just melted away from the sound of it.’

  ‘Or paid to disappear.’

  ‘Very probable.’ He sighed. ‘The Seacombes were afraid of something … that sinister little graveyard for one thing…. We’ve got to go back there…. Slimy Sid can go screw himself.’

  There was a pause before Olivia spoke again. The subject took Markham by surprise.

  ‘I’ve started attending the Newman for some regression therapy, Gil.’

  Another pause.

  ‘Actually, I was there today.’

  I don’t like that place, he wanted to scream. I don’t want you there. Especially not now.

  But his girlfriend’s face had that closed look it sometimes wore, and he knew better than to probe her oyster-like impenetrability.

  He felt a wave of burning resentment. Why could she not trust him as he trusted her?

  ‘Perhaps I’ll see you around the hospital,’ was all he said, careful to keep the edge from his voice.

  The interlude of affectionate complicity was over. With a queer little ache in his heart, Markham rose to his feet. ‘Duty calls,’ he said simply.

  11. Out of Joint

  THE NEWMAN’S ANTISEPTIC CLINICISM made Markham’s eyes ache. Times and seasons seemed to have no meaning in the hospital, its gleaming white corridors and strip lighting turning night into an everlasting day. He felt a sharp sense of dislocation a
s he made his way towards the incident room, the reunion with Olivia having heightened his feeling that the world was somehow unhappily out of joint.

  The DI paused outside the door, smoothing his features into an expression of imperturbable gravitas, as befitted the SIO on an increasingly nightmarish murder case.

  He found Noakes and Doyle animatedly reviewing the recent performance of Bromgrove Wanderers, observed by Kate Burton with a distinctly glazed look in her eyes which suggested she’d had a bellyful. At Markham’s entrance, she brightened up, practically clicking her heels, so relieved was she to see him.

  ‘Evening, team.’

  Noakes broke off from an engrossing debate about whether Bromgrove’s skipper deserved to be sent off for diving, and eyed his boss with the squinty-eyed narrowness Markham had learned to dread. His assumed sang-froid might deceive Burton and Doyle, but George Noakes was another matter.

  Summat’s up with the guvnor, the DS thought to himself. Summat to do with Olivia (lingering over her name as a miser his gold). The day suddenly seemed very dark to Noakes though, in the rapture of post-match analysis, it had been very bright the minute before. Even the doughnut snagged from the hospital canteen had lost its allure.

  ‘You okay, Guv?’ That was as far as he dared go in front of the others.

  The DI forced a smile. ‘Just knackered, Sergeant. Like all of you.’

  He could tell Noakes wasn’t deceived. That mulish look suggested his wingman would return to the charge before the day was very much older. In the meantime, Markham wanted an update.

  The DI turned to Burton. ‘What news of the PM on David Belcher?’

  ‘Knocked unconscious then strangled, sir.’

  At least the poor devil was dead and past his pain before being tipped into the ventilation shaft. There would be some small comfort for Mikey in that.

  ‘How did it go with your contact at the council, Kate? Any problems with access to Ted Cartwright’s office?’

  ‘Worked like a dream, sir.’ The mischievous grin made Burton look like a schoolgirl who’d “got one over” on the grownups. ‘No-one batted an eyelid. He just did his internet bot number – spouted some gobbledygook at Cartwright’s airhead secretary, who was more interested in painting her nails and catching up on office gossip than checking what the geek from IT got up to.’ The DS gestured to a folder bulging with papers and printouts. ‘This arrived a little while ago.’

  ‘Anything interesting?’ Markham asked eagerly.

  ‘Well, I haven’t gone through it all yet, sir. But Cartwright was in regular contact with Doctor Warr and the Chief Super all right … outside official business, from the look of it.’ She frowned. ‘Parts of the correspondence look like they may be in some sort of code.’

  ‘Code?’ Noakes guffawed. ‘We’re talking about Ted Cartwright here, y’know. Not Double O Seven, luv.’

  Doyle gave an appreciative snigger.

  ‘Ignore them, Kate.’ At the DI’s boot-faced expression, further witticisms expired on Noakes’s lips.

  Markham was thoughtful. ‘Code,’ he repeated. ‘Can you ask your friend to take a look for us?’ Burton nodded vigorously. ‘But absolute discretion, do you understand?’ Even more vigorous assent. ‘We’re talking about a council solicitor and our Chief Super. If the DCI gets wind of it, we’re toast … directing traffic for the rest of our days.’

  ‘Looks like there’s other stuff too, sir.’

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘Well, you know those names Cartwright gave us … the ones we were checking in the archives?’

  ‘Not much doing, as I recall.’

  ‘That’s right, sir. But looks like there were a few cases in the late eighties and early nineties that caused ripples.’

  ‘Ripples?’ Markham was intrigued.

  ‘As in folk making a fuss …’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘There was this patient with learning disabilities called Rose. Well, she had a sister who turned up at the Newman shouting the odds. Made quite a scene from the sound of it…. Claimed that Rose had been sectioned cos she was going to shoot her mouth off about secrets … sexual abuse … stuff the family didn’t want to get out.’

  ‘Who was the abuser?’

  ‘Rose’s father.’

  ‘How come our lot weren’t involved?’ Noakes was dumbfounded. ‘I mean, we’re talking incest for fuck’s sake.’

  ‘Well, this is where it gets interesting, Sarge.’ Burton clearly enjoyed holding the floor, her cheeks flushed with excitement. ‘Rose was diagnosed with schizophrenia – hearing voices, out of touch with reality, the usual – so the sister got short shrift.’ The DS rumpled her neat pageboy, such unwonted dishevelment a sure sign that this particular case history had got under her skin. ‘It was a respectable family … well-connected. Reading between the lines, it sounds as though they managed to get any police involvement closed down pretty much at the outset.’

  ‘For a price, one assumes.’ Markham’s tone was dark with anger.

  ‘What happened to this Rose, then?’ Doyle’s good-natured face was unusually indignant. ‘Did they just keep her locked up? Did she even have schizophrenia in the first place?’ He was falling over his words now. ‘You can’t just imprison people. There’s habeas corpus … stuff like that.’ Clearly the young DC’s part-time law classes were bearing fruit, if this allusion was anything to go by.

  The DS raised her hands palm upwards in a gesture of defeat.

  ‘Who knows? From the sound of it, Rose went into the Newman with mild retardation and some emotional issues but ended up a vegetable…. She had ECTs followed by “psychosurgical intervention” which was deemed to be of “limited effectiveness”.’ The grimace which accompanied Burton’s air quotes was ample testimony to her disgust. ‘The sister only got to see her once afterwards … she was devastated because Rose wouldn’t look at her … like she thought she’d been abandoned and left to rot.’

  ‘Christ,’ Doyle breathed.

  ‘Oh, it gets worse,’ Burton said sadly. ‘Rose’s mum had a breakdown. Never got over the tragedy, absolutely traumatized. Died six months later.’

  ‘Where did Rose end up?’ The DI experienced a sense of acute foreboding.

  ‘She was on the intensive care ward to start with.’

  Markham thought of those seriously disturbed human beings and the row of locked cells with their reinforced doors. Involuntarily, his hands clenched.

  ‘They don’t keep women patients there for long,’ Burton said uncomfortably. ‘And there’s a designated female-only safe space …’

  ‘Oh, so that’s all right then.’ Noakes’s sarcastic rejoinder hung in the air.

  ‘Of course it’s not all right!’ the DS burst out. ‘I feel as bad about it as you do!’

  ‘Shut up, Noakes.’

  ‘I only meant ter say—’

  ‘Button it, Sergeant.’ It was a tone which brooked no dissent.

  Noakes subsided, muttering to himself, ‘A right poor do …’

  The DI turned back to Burton. ‘It’s a wretched story, Kate. I can see it’s upset you.’

  ‘What happened in the end?’ Doyle asked impatiently.

  ‘I’m guessing once Rose was stabilized it was medium secure care for a while, then she must’ve been discharged to a step-down unit.’

  ‘Eh?’ Noakes was staging a rapid comeback from Markham’s rebuke. ‘What’s one of those when it’s at home?’

  ‘Like a rehabilitation centre … somewhere to prepare her for life in the community.’

  ‘You said you were “guessing”, Kate? How come?’

  ‘Well, sir, the paper trail seems to go cold after she left the Newman…. That or there’s gaps in the records.’

  ‘Paperwork conveniently lost, you mean.’ The DI’s lips were tightly compressed.

  ‘The sister didn’t give up … kept badgering. But Rose had requested there be no contact with family.’

  A spark kindled far down in Markham’s dark eye
s.

  ‘She didn’t have capacity.’

  Burton shrugged helplessly. ‘There was lasting power of attorney. The father and older brothers claimed to be consulting Rose’s wishes. There were other younger siblings who’d been affected by her violent outbursts in the past … seems to have been accepted all round that it’d be easier to park her in an institution somewhere.’

  Suddenly, as vividly as if the image was imprinted on his retina, Markham pictured a narrow brick vault full of bones. A young woman’s bones.

  ‘I don’t think Rose ever found her way back home,’ he said quietly, before telling Burton and Doyle about the lonely little graveyard at Seacrest.

  When he had finished, there was dead silence.

  ‘Are you saying patients like Rose were being murdered for convenience, sir?’

  ‘Or, to be put it another way, euthanized.’ The DI looked steadily at Doyle who was visibly shaken. ‘Chronic neglect, starvation and medication “mix ups” would probably do the trick, so no need for more overt measures.’

  ‘They murdered her mum too,’ Doyle said passionately.

  ‘Well, she had emphysema,’ Burton answered. ‘But learning about the botched operation sent her into a depression … it was all done behind her back you see. She nearly ended up in the Newman herself … in the end she just lost the will to live.’

  ‘Do we have a surname for Rose?’

  ‘From what I’ve seen, it’s just initials. RS.’ Burton looked discouraged. ‘And for all we know, sir, they mightn’t be genuine.’

  ‘Any names of medical personnel?’

  The DS shook her head. ‘It’s all very secret squirrel, boss. Doctor X and Nurse Y, that kind of thing.’

  ‘Huh,’ Noakes spat out venomously. ‘We all know it was them two, wasn’t it? Kennedy an’ Molloy … not forgetting the boy wonder hisself.’

  ‘Boy wonder?’ Doyle echoed in bewilderment.

  ‘Keep up, shit-for-brains,’ the DS riposted amicably. ‘Jonathan Warr, of course. He’d ’ve been in his late thirties then, working up to being a consultant like them.’ He turned to the DI, ‘What d’you think Warr’s cut was?’