‘We’re looking for a risk-taker, Sergeant,’ he said slowly. ‘Someone who sees a chance and takes it.’ Dark eyes surveyed the room. ‘If it’s one of them downstairs and this is an inside job, then we’re dealing with a cool customer. Coming up here was a risk, but still they chanced it.’
‘If they did little Alex too, then we’ve got ourselves a serial,’ Noakes said sombrely.
The airless little room seemed to darken at his words. Once again, despite the fug, Markham felt a clammy touch of apprehension, as though he was a dumb animal unable to measure results.
To dispel the impression, he shook himself briskly.
‘Right, let’s get to it. Noakes and I will take the staff downstairs and see who’s alibied for yesterday afternoon when that poor fellow was getting his throat cut.’ The DI was still haunted by that disbelieving father waiting patiently for his son who lay stiff and sightless just feet away. Mild and inoffensive, Randall senior had urged, ‘Just tell him we’re here, will you,’ as though unable to comprehend that the silence in his boy’s ear was never more to be broken.
‘And we need to roust those two trustees from wherever they’re lurking,’ he added with evident distaste. ‘Can’t afford to have them running to the DCI with further complaints of lèse-majesté.’
He turned to Kate Burton. ‘I want you and Doyle to cover the university angle, Kate. Check who’s involved in this anti-colonialism protest or whatever it is, have a discreet word with the authorities while you’re at it.’
‘You don’t think—’
‘No, I don’t reckon we’re looking for a student.’ The DI’s face hardened. ‘It’s a distraction, though, and one we could do without.’
A thought struck him. ‘It may be that one of the protestors noticed something without realizing what it meant.’ He exhaled heavily. ‘A long shot, but who knows . . .’
‘On it, sir.’ She looked pleased with the assignment, Noakes noted sourly. Thank Christ he didn’t have to waste an afternoon schmoozing a bunch of posers and listening to all their arty-farty bullshit. As for all that abstract stuff, he fancied he could do better himself. Security wasn’t that tight in the modern art room. What a joke if someone scribbled a shape on one of those weird pictures with all the squares and rectangles. Probably no one would notice any difference.
‘Ready, Sergeant?’
Not for the first time, Noakes had the uncomfortable sensation that the DI could read his mind.
* * *
‘Well, we didn’t get much out of those two.’
Doyle sounded despondent.
‘Spoiled entitled smart-arses the pair of them.’
‘You’re starting to sound like Noakes,’ Burton observed mildly.
That elicited a shaky laugh.
Privately, however, she was inclined to agree.
The two detectives sat in a bland conference room in the Fine Arts Faculty. Though it was now dark outside, Burton was familiar with the tastefully landscaped setting — manicured lawns, Barbara Hepworth style sculptures and Zen cascading bowls. The adjacent corridors were lined with striking examples of modern art and what looked like aboriginal face masks (‘like something off Easter Island’, muttered Doyle, not at all sotto voce). Although situated just outside the town centre in the predominantly working-class suburb of Medway, the university campus possessed a sheen which could only have come from pots of government and European money. Burton felt quite at ease in the place where she had completed her MA in Gender Studies, but she had sensed her colleague’s hackles rise and understood his resentment. With a good brain and a decent set of A levels, Doyle could doubtless look forward to his own career break at some point. The DI had been swift to notice the young detective’s interest in criminal law, so it was more than likely he would go on to do a law degree. In the meantime, however, he struggled to control his pique at being patronized by the likes of supercilious students who had clearly dismissed him as ‘Plod’ and therefore presumably thick as mince.
In their neatly pressed jeans and crisply ironed shirts, the two young men produced by the Dean of the Faculty had been the antithesis of the stereotypical student yobbo so anathematized by Noakes. In fact, after listening to them bore on earnestly — as though their listeners were two exceptionally stupid students — about ‘the need to atone’ and ‘patriarchal hegemonies’, she felt reasonably confident that they would soon move on from artistic injustice to the next appropriately ‘woke’ piece of agitprop.
‘One thing’s for sure,’ the DS said wearily. ‘They genuinely knew nothing about the fire.’
Doyle sniggered. ‘Their faces were a picture. And then when they went all Mahatma Gandhi on us . . . I mean, all that bollocks about nonviolent resistance. Big yawn to that.’ Clearly, he was looking forward to telling Noakes all about it in the pub later.
‘Well, they certainly looked convincingly outraged at the mere idea of arson.’
‘Yeah, all mouth. Talk the talk but not walk the walk, if you know what I mean.’
‘As the guvnor said, we can rule them out for the murders, though we need to take statements so we’ve got an idea of the demonstrators’ movements.’
Doyle groaned.
‘Think of it as community relations,’ his colleague said ruthlessly.
‘Anyway, it wasn’t a total waste of time,’ she continued more brightly. ‘Did you notice how shifty they looked when I asked if they’d been inside the gallery at any point?’
‘That’s true.’ Doyle was thoughtful. ‘I mean, it’s part of their degree to study paintings and things, isn’t it? So no reason for them to look so uncomfortable unless—’
‘They’d been up to something illicit.’
‘Something involving Melville and Randall, sarge?’
‘I don’t know.’ Burton rumpled her pageboy as though by this means she could fire up the synapses. ‘Perhaps them . . . perhaps someone else.’ She smiled at the lanky youngster. ‘At any rate, it may give us ammo when it comes to the DCI.’ As in Operation Misinformation.
‘What, you think he wants to pin it on a student?’
‘Well, let’s just say he doesn’t want the boss going anywhere near the gallery bigwigs or the Carter investigation.’ She compressed her lips tightly. ‘The university Mental Health Advisory Service, on the other hand . . .’
‘A bit devious, ain’t it, sarge?’
‘Don’t you go all sanctimonious on me like those two virtue-signallers back there,’ she snapped. ‘Why should the boss always have to suffer for being an outstanding copper while Sidney gets away with being a perfect shit?’
‘All right, all right, keep your hair on.’ Doyle was startled by her outburst.
‘I’m sorry.’ She grimaced apologetically. ‘But the guvnor needs space for this one, and if Sidney’s all over him it’ll just suck the oxygen out of the investigation. You know the score. Remember the Newman case.’
‘Point taken. So . . .’
‘Check the students’ movements and backgrounds . . . any mental health issues . . . links to gallery personnel . . . emotional entanglements, that kind of thing.’ She smoothed the lapels of her conservatively cut trouser suit. ‘If we blind the DCI with science, there’s more chance he’ll leave the boss alone.’
‘Reading you loud and clear, sarge. I’ll swing by Student Administration and make a start.’
‘Try the Students’ Union as well. I’ll square it with the boss . . . call it undercover work.’
‘Will do.’ The thought of a pint and the company of pretty girls brought a smile to Doyle’s face, and he walked off with a spring in his step.
When he had gone, Burton cursed herself for a fool, her face hot.
Why had she flared up like that? What the hell would Doyle think?
She was relieved Noakes hadn’t been there. He knew she still carried a torch for Markham and squirmed at the thought of those shrewd piggy eyes taking it all in.
Besides, over the course of the last two investigati
ons, Markham had gradually admitted her to that charmed circle of friendship whose only other members were Noakes and Olivia. It had taken time, but she no longer felt like a gatecrasher confronted by ‘No Entry’ signs. No way was she going to blow it by letting her feelings get the better of her. In any case, she was engaged to Colin. They were a good team. He had no idea how she felt about her boss, and she intended to keep things that way.
Feeling better now that she had given herself a talking-to, Burton’s thoughts turned to the investigation.
None of the gallery staff really made an impression as a likely suspect. There was Bill Hignett, of course . . . If the DCI got a whiff of that, then he’d have the prime suspect all boxed up in no time. As far as Sidney was concerned, if there was an e-fit better than a deranged student, it would be the learning-disabled misfit.
Personally, she didn’t see it. The man had struck her as harmless, sweet even. But then there was the mother with those burrowing eyes. Something wary and vigilant about her, but of course it might just be the strain of looking out for her son. Couldn’t be easy having to keep tabs on him all the time.
Once out of the building, she drove back to the gallery via St Chad’s Parish Church behind the Town Hall. The thermostat in that conference room had been turned up to the max — hotter than Center Parcs — and, with intimations of a migraine throbbing behind her eyes, she needed to clear her head.
A heavy mist shrouded the terraced cemetery, filmy white vapours softening the usual perspective of dank tombs and sodden grass. The air was cold, clean and odourless, as welcome in her overheated condition as a lover’s caress.
She sank onto a bench, barely aware of the damp beneath her clothes.
Everything was oddly beautiful, almost weightless. Time seemed suspended.
She looked up at the sky. No stars were out, but street lamps made the darkness mysteriously refulgent like the light from another world.
Burton was not prone to philosophical conjecture, but she suddenly felt a wrenching sadness at the thought that Helen Melville and Charles Randall could no longer enjoy such earthly beauties. All times and seasons were alike to them.
Then she remembered something the local vicar had said at Uncle Phil’s funeral. ‘When a person dies, their spirit hangs around to watch for a while.’
She shivered.
Were the murdered couple watching and listening at the gallery? Were their souls unable to rest until justice was served? And what of little Alex Carter? Was he there too, a little waif haunting the place for more than twenty years?
Snap out of it, she admonished herself, else Noakes’ll decide I’m away with the fairies.
Who were they hunting?
If the three murders were somehow connected, then a killer’s hatred had festered underground for years. Like the corrupt watercourse beneath an ancient cemetery, she thought, looking about her with a shudder.
In that moment, the graveyard no longer struck her as beautiful, thoughts of its earth-clogged inhabitants crowding into her mind like ghouls resurrected from their tombs.
Time to leave.
As she walked to her car, the bell tolled six o’clock.
It felt like an omen.
* * *
Back at the gallery, all was quiet.
She found Markham and Noakes in the characterless office next to the exhibition centre which now functioned as their incident room.
‘Any joy here, sir?’, she enquired after delivering a succinct report on her visit to the university.
‘Not to speak of.’ Markham sounded discouraged. ‘At the time of Mr Randall’s murder, all the gallery staff had dispersed. Either headed home for the afternoon or, in the case of senior staff, catching up on work in the library. No alibi worth mentioning in most cases.’
‘You missed a bit of a barney, though.’ Noakes spoke with lubricious relish.
‘How’s that?’
‘Daniel Westbrook and Rebecca Summerson going at each other hammer and tongs.’
‘Westbrook . . . oh yes, the art collector’s nephew.’ She frowned. ‘I recall he didn’t seem to like Helen Melville much.’
‘Clash of egos, one supposes,’ Markham took over. ‘Anyway, he made an unfortunate remark about Ms Melville’s pushiness—’
‘Said she’d have killed her own grandmother to get promotion,’ Noakes put in.
‘As I say, an unfortunate turn of phrase in the circumstances.’
‘And Rebecca Summerson overheard him?’
‘Indeed.’
‘Ouch.’
‘Summerson lit into him.’ Noakes was clearly enjoying himself. ‘Called him a male chauvinist pig who couldn’t bear to see women getting ahead. Then he slagged her off. Said she was a neurotic bitch, a bed-hopper an’ a bunny boiler—’
‘Amongst other things,’ Markham’s voice was dry. ‘All deeply unedifying, as you can imagine.’
‘Took folk’s minds off things, though.’ Noakes seemed determined to have the last word. ‘Their eyes were out on stalks.’
‘Miss Crocker and Aubrey Carstone defused it,’ the DI concluded, ‘before things got really ugly.’
‘Christ, tensions are running high.’ Burton felt a shamefaced envy at having missed the action.
‘Where were the trustees while this was going on?’ she asked. ‘Don’t tell me they got an earful.’
‘Oh yeah. Ringside seats.’ Noakes was cheerfully unrepentant. ‘The snotty one . . . James Armitage looked like he was gonna have a coronary. Must’ve thought he’d walked into one of them Carry On films — all sex and “ooh, er, missus.”’
‘In the circumstances, I’ve adjourned our meeting with the trustees until tomorrow.’ From his grim expression, this was clearly not how the DI had hoped to start his day. ‘Then we’re going to have a crack at Westbrook and Summerson separately. If there’s a clue somewhere in Summerson’s love life, I want to know about it.’
‘Do you really think it’s about some kind of love triangle?’ Burton was sceptical.
‘No, Kate, I don’t. But we’re missing something and the cracks are showing with those two. Time to ramp up the pressure.’
‘Did anyone recognize that map you found in the archives room, sir?’
‘No. But that’s one reason I want another shot at Westbrook. He’s our connection to Donald Lestrange.’ Markham spoke with careful deliberation. ‘I think it’s likely that piece of paper we discovered earlier somehow got dislodged from the Lestrange file, either when Helen Melville removed the papers or when our killer trashed the contents of the archives room hoping to obliterate any trace of incriminating material.’ He steepled his long slender fingers together in a characteristically meditative gesture. ‘We need to know more about Lestrange and his connection with the gallery.’
‘You reckon that’ll lead us to the house on the drawing, guv?’
‘I think it might, Noakes.’
He looked at their tired faces.
‘Enough for tonight. Briefing here tomorrow eight a.m. sharp.’
* * *
‘Aedicula. The house within a house.’ It really existed, Markham just knew it.
And when he found it, he would have his murderer.
7. Echoes from the Past
Markham passed a restless night.
In his dreams, under the spell of aediculae, he fell to castle-building. All night long he was putting wings up, taking wings down, adding a secret chamber and a grated dungeon here, putting in an alcove or cellar there.
He built on and built on, busily, busily all through the night, watching great blocks of stone dangling in the air before being levered into their appointed place. At last, he surveyed the finished work. And there on the battlements was a dark figure like a black stick. He couldn’t make out the face, but the phantom’s lips seemed to move in an imprecation or chant as though to put a curse on the builder.
Then the figure stretched out his arm and pointed down, down into the bowels of the castle . . . And Markham
knew without being told that there was the skeleton of a child interred in a sealed room behind a passageway, left to moulder into dust . . .
He awoke in a cold sweat. The alarm clock said 5 a.m.
Quietly, so as not to disturb Olivia, he slid out of bed and stole into his study where he sat at his desk which faced out into the darkness. Gazing through the window, with the influence of the dream still upon him, he fancied he still saw through the glass that fortified stronghold constructed over the remains of a dead child. It was so real to him, he felt he could reach out and touch it, could hear the voice of the little prisoner pleading with the master builder to uncover his story.
Eventually the sound of Olivia in the kitchen broke the spell.
‘It’s snowing, Gil,’ she said wonderingly as she brought the much-needed coffee.
And so it was, the municipal graveyard next to their apartment block emerged softly-draped as though a pristine counterpane had been tucked tenderly about the sleepers in that quiet earth.
Markham gradually felt the horrors of the night begin to recede as Wednesday morning dawned crisp and bright.
It was the spectre of the Alex Carter investigation getting to him, he told himself. He’d take Noakes with him that afternoon to see Jim McLeod out in Calder Vale. Kate Burton was owed an outing, but Noakes would be a better bet in the circumstances.
‘I can’t get pictures of castles and ancient buildings and secret stairways out of my head,’ he told Olivia ruefully. ‘This blasted aedicula thing’s got a real hold.’
‘That and the mystery of the little boy who went missing from the gallery,’ she added gently.
Seeing her boyfriend’s brows contract, she said in a lighter tone. ‘So, which of your suspects is really a belted earl with estates to match? I mean, if that map you found had something to do with the murders — as in X marks the spot — then presumably there’s a mansion or manor house somewhere in the mix.’
‘That’s just it, sweetheart.’ Markham burst out in tones of purest exasperation. ‘We’ve got addresses for all of them. Some are well-heeled right enough. Aubrey Carstone’s not doing it for the money — private means, I gather. Same goes for Benedict Bramwell, and the other senior staff don’t look short of a bob or two. But we’re not talking landed gentry.’ He looked out at the cemetery whose serene perfection was testament to the eventual erasure of life’s perplexities and mists. ‘That drawing with the Alex Carter doodle is the clue to it all, Liv, I’m sure of it . . . and those missing documents . . . the Lestrange papers . . .’
Detective Markham Mysteries Box Set Page 111