Detective Markham Mysteries Box Set

by Catherine Moloney

  ‘Your journalist friend would not let the past alone,’ he said. ‘A risky path to take.’

  ‘So, you got Lurch here to smash his head in,’ growled Noakes. ‘An’ then you stuck him in that suit of armour like the Man in the Iron Mask, you sick fuck.’ Now it was the DS looking dangerous.

  Carstone’s face twitched.

  The face of a man who fetishized concealment and fled the light.

  ‘You had a brother,’ Markham said.

  ‘Charles Henry.’ It was a child’s shrill piping voice. Markham felt the hairs rise on the back of his neck. ‘Charlie left and never came back.’

  Carstone’s eyes were suddenly glassy, unfocused.

  ‘I never stopped looking, and then there he was one day at the gallery in front of me . . . recalled to life. I only knew that I had to bring him back to Greygarth . . .’

  And that was where the fantasy broke down, thought Markham, leaving him with a little corpse to dispose of.

  Suddenly he remembered how Daniel Westbrook had described his state of mind on the afternoon of Helen Melville’s funeral. ‘I was in a kind of fugue state.’

  Fugue. A dissociative disorder. Characterized by breakdown of personal identity and amnesia.

  Whatever had happened with Alex Carter in this room, there had been no recalling to life. Charles Henry was irrevocably gone, and it was possibly this realization breaking into Carstone’s guilt-ridden fantasy which led to a final terrible eruption of grief and murder.

  ‘Donald was with me that day.’ The shrill treble broke into his thoughts. ‘Donald helped after I closed his throat . . . Donald helped . . .’

  Closed his throat.

  As a child, Aubrey Carstone was caught with his hands round his brother’s throat. And decades later, in the room where they were sitting, those same hands had fastened like talons about another child’s neck.

  It was likely they would never know the trigger for Carstone’s murderous aberrations. Was he the victim of childhood abuse — some trauma which left an indelible scar? Was sibling jealousy at the root of it all? Or had something in Aubrey Carstone simply closed off at six years of age? Markham recalled a lecturer at Bramshill saying the psychopathic personality emerged as early as three years old . . . Was that the case with the man in front of him? To outward appearance a successful academic and art critic, but inside a hollow shell.

  Along with the revulsion, there was profound pity.

  ‘So, you chucked him in with the rubble, you and your mate, Donald?’ Noakes enquired gutturally. ‘In a bin bag, was it? Or did you root out a cardboard box?’

  ‘The artists’ group was helping with renovations.’ Carstone’s voice was monotonous now, as though he was sleep-walking. ‘We laid him in the wall cavity.’

  A makeshift coffin, like the one depicted in the Silvine notebook.

  Noakes’s normally florid complexion was now floury white.

  Sick fuck. Sick fuck. Sick fuck.

  The words tolled like a mantra in his head. As if they could somehow obliterate the image of that pitiful grave a hand’s breadth away behind the room’s ornate gilding and stucco.

  ‘What about Basher Bill . . . where does he fit in? Jus’ helps you out whenever you have a spot of bother, like?’ Furious sarcasm spewed out of Noakes like lava.

  Carstone’s eyes softened.

  ‘Cathy and Bill have always been part of my life,’ he said. ‘They were the family I never had.’

  At these words, Bill Hignett moved closer to Carstone’s chair, as though answering the tug of an invisible leash.

  ‘Let my sergeant go.’ The DI did not trust himself to speak Kate’s name. ‘She’s bought you time, now let her go.’

  Lazily, Carstone stroked the handle of the pistol on his lap. His eyes — no longer cloudy but filled with implacable purpose — were riveted on Markham’s face.

  Then he released the safety catch.

  The two policemen tensed in their seats, ready to spring.

  In a single fluid movement, Carstone held the gun to his temple and gave a deep shuddering sigh.

  Then his eyes widened and fixed on some spot on the wall to the right of the fireplace.

  ‘Charlie,’ he said with the eagerness of a lover, and pressed the trigger.

  Epilogue

  ‘I guess after the Bulger case we understand so much more these days about childhood trauma and whatever it is that leads to children killing . . . the fact that kids don’t see good and bad or death the same way adults do . . .’

  Kate Burton sighed and continued gently, ‘But it was a very different world when Aubrey Carstone was a child.’

  ‘D’you think his mum and dad figured it out?’ Noakes was intrigued despite himself. ‘As in worked out that Aubrey had summat to do with his twin brother’s death? I mean, his mum hit the bottle, didn’t she?’

  ‘We’ll never know for sure, sarge.’ Burton’s forehead lifted and knitted itself into an expression of perplexity that was more and more common with her these days. ‘But I think Aubrey did have something to do with it. Egged Charles Henry on or even pushed him through that opening in the mausoleum, then left him there.’

  The team was sitting with Olivia in The Grapes four weeks after the conclusion of what became known as ‘the gallery case.’

  The quaint, resolutely unfashionable little pub was a favourite resort of ‘Markham’s gang’ once investigations were concluded. Denise, the formidable landlady and a dead ringer for Corrie’s Bette Lynch, always made sure they had the back room to themselves on such occasions and safeguarded the DI’s privacy like a tigress. A subdued hum of conversation floated through from the front lounge, which had all the quirky charm of a ship’s brig with its extensive array of antique nautical instruments and other seafaring paraphernalia accumulated over decades, but nothing disturbed their peace in Denise’s back parlour where a log fire crackled cosily, casting shadows over the uneven wooden floor that Noakes always said made him seasick just to walk across.

  ‘So, it all came down to jealousy when Carstone was a kid.’ Doyle sounded bewildered.

  ‘As Kate says, it’s unlikely we’ll ever know the truth of what went on.’ Markham was resigned. ‘But whatever happened, I suspect Aubrey lived in denial and the people round him supported that instead of helping him to understand himself and come to terms with it.’ The DI looked at his friends gathered about the table in their comfortable inglenook. ‘A terrible tragedy for all concerned.’ His eyes fell to the table. ‘Aubrey Carstone was a severely disturbed child who needed intensive therapeutic intervention. His mother may well have realized the truth and eventually cracked under the weight of that knowledge. It probably led to her alcoholism.’

  ‘Nobody thought of him as a child who had murdered,’ Olivia put in softly. ‘So nobody foresaw a future explosion or breaking point.’

  ‘Donald Lestrange had some idea,’ Noakes said, eyeing his empty glass.

  Doyle knew his cue. ‘Same again, sarge?’

  ‘Aye, lad.’ The DS might as well just take his ale intravenously, thought his young colleague suppressing a grin. He was always the same when it came to these inquests.

  ‘What about you, sir? Kate? Olivia?’

  The others were only halfway through their drinks. ‘Nothing for us,’ Markham said with a swift interrogative glance at his lover and Kate. ‘But be sure to get one for yourself and put it on my tab.’

  Doyle headed to the lounge with alacrity.

  Noakes continued making vigorous inroads on the pork scratchings.

  ‘What d’you reckon happened with Lestrange?’ He addressed the question to Burton, his tone almost deferential.

  Olivia smiled to herself. This was a turn up for the books. The old war horse seeking psychological insights from the university-educated whippersnapper!

  But she thought she had detected signs of a genuine rapprochement between the two and gave silent thanks for it. Whatever their personal idiosyncrasies and rivalries, they were
Markham’s twin towers.

  Kate Burton’s eyes rested on her old adversary with something close to affection. ‘Again, sarge, I don’t think we’ll ever know the whole story.’

  Not if DCI Sidney had anything to do with it, she might have added.

  ‘But Lestrange was there in the gallery with Carstone the day of the abduction,’ Noakes persisted stubbornly.

  Kate’s eyes were misty as she tried to unravel it all.

  ‘I think it may have been a spur of the moment thing. Aubrey snatched the child on an impulse then panicked. Lestrange and Hignett could’ve helped him smuggle Alex out to Greygarth afterwards.’

  ‘Alex’s mum said she smelled summat sharp and spicy on that corridor where the lad was taken . . . could’ve been some sort of chemical cleaner. An’ she talked about seeing white hands. Everyone thought she was out of it at the time . . . but Carstone worked in restoration.’

  ‘That’s right, sarge. Curators use fluids all the time, and white cotton gloves. Plus, there was a private staff staircase behind that alcove on the archives corridor.’ She made a sleight-of-hand gesture. ‘It would have been a matter of seconds.’

  ‘But did Carstone figure Alex Carter as a replacement for Charles Henry, or what?’ It sounded as though Noakes’s bafflement would be immune to any amount of beer.

  ‘If he had a mental crisis . . . some kind of episode where he was reliving that childhood rage, George . . .’

  Anything Markham’s ethereal-looking girlfriend said was generally gospel to Noakes — much to his wife’s ill-concealed irritation — but in this instance, he looked pretty much floored.

  ‘You’re not suggesting he couldn’t help hisself, I s’pose.’ Suspicion of bleeding-heart liberalism ran through Noakes like a stick of rock.

  ‘I think there must have been some kind of pathology which would have led sooner or later to violence.’ Olivia never talked down to him. ‘We’ll never know for certain, what with Donald Lestrange being dead.’

  The DS blinked hard as though to clear his vision.

  ‘That gorilla of Carstone’s sure ain’t giving us anything,’ he muttered.

  ‘Bill Hignett,’ Markham corrected him with a faint note of reproof. ‘I doubt he’ll ever be fit to stand trial, Noakesy.’

  ‘One more for that crowd at the Newman to work on.’ The DS’s tone left no doubt that he didn’t hold out much hopes of the wretched man’s rehabilitation. But then, he had never been a fan of Bromgrove’s mental health unit and its ‘trick cyclists.’

  Doyle had returned to their table with fresh pints for himself and Noakes, who smacked his lips appreciatively.

  ‘I wondered if p’raps Bill was Carstone’s love-child or something.’

  ‘You what?’ The DS boggled at the youngster.

  ‘Well, it’d explain Carstone always protecting him.’ Doyle sounded affronted.

  Markham made haste to pour oil on troubled waters.

  ‘An interesting suggestion,’ he said diplomatically. Then more seriously, ‘I hope in time we can learn more from Cathy Hignett. Who knows, possibly the bond between Aubrey and Bill was cemented by something else . . . some common experience of childhood abuse . . . a recognition of shared trauma . . .’

  ‘Or mebbe the pair of ’em were just evil bastards.’

  Noakes looked sideways at Kate Burton as he said this.

  ‘I’m all right now, sarge,’ she said, laying a timid hand on his arm. ‘They didn’t lay a finger on me. Just kept me shut up in a bedroom while they were . . . doing whatever it was downstairs.’

  ‘What d’you think they were doing all that time?’ asked Doyle wide-eyed.

  ‘God knows,’ grunted Noakes. ‘Voodoo an’ black masses I shouldn’t wonder.’ He took a huge swig of his drink. ‘Gloating over little Alex Carter’s grave . . . or mebbe they popped down the churchyard for a quick peep at Charles Henry.’

  ‘Well, at least in the end you were able to reclaim “The Lost Boy” and give him a proper funeral.’

  The group fell silent at Olivia’s words, recalling the poignant ceremony at Greygarth Parish Church which had preceded Alex Carter’s interment next to the other little victim.

  ‘Do you reckon they’ll find other kids there, sir?’ Doyle asked thinking of the Cold Case Unit which had discreetly taken over occupation of the estate.

  ‘I think it’s possible, Doyle, given the length of the association between Carstone and Hignett.’

  ‘Sidney’ll lay it all at Hignett’s door, you c’n be sure of that,’ grunted Noakes. ‘No chance of his precious gallery being dragged through the tabloids.’

  ‘Speaking of which,’ Olivia said lightly. ‘What news of the team there?’

  ‘Still pretty much shell-shocked.’ Burton took up the baton. ‘Though, it’s amazing how many of them claim to have sensed something dodgy about Carstone all along,’ she concluded wryly.

  ‘Interesting what Benedict Bramwell said about there having been a spat between Carstone and Helen Melville.’ Doyle contemplated his Foster’s ruminatively.

  ‘What kind of spat?’ Noakes enquired curiously.

  ‘Well, he just said it in passing.’ Doyle was clearly pleased to be the imparter of information. ‘Something to do with plagiarism or taking credit for other people’s work. Y’know, her and Randall muscling in on those aediculae or whatever they’re called.’

  So, the childhood jealousy never went away, thought Markham. Carstone carried that ‘vicious mole of nature’ to the very end.

  ‘Ms Melville and Randall played a dangerous game,’ he said aloud.

  ‘In their book, they held all the aces,’ Noakes put in. ‘An’ they thought Carstone was just this feeble old fella . . . never twigged the connection between him and Hignett.’

  ‘I reckon Melville imagined she could get him to confess . . . that would’ve been the icing on the cake. Ta-da!’ Doyle was motoring now. ‘As it was, she couldn’t be totally sure . . . didn’t see where Lestrange fitted in . . .’

  ‘With Randall, it was blackmail.’ Markham thought sadly of that desperate father waiting to keep his rendezvous with the son who was already dead.

  ‘But he knew Carstone had killed his girlfriend, sir.’ Doyle looked round the table. ‘So why didn’t he turn him in?’

  ‘He planned to extort money from him . . . use the knowledge as a bargaining chip for career advancement—’

  ‘Mebbe deep down he was secretly glad to be shot of Melville,’ Noakes interposed. ‘Figured old Aubrey had done him a favour.’

  ‘God that’s sick, sarge.’

  ‘That’s life, lad.’ A stentorian verdict.

  ‘Randall’s motives were probably mixed,’ Markham said with decision. ‘Like Helen Melville, he no doubt looked up to Carstone . . . hoped Aubrey would be able to explain away past sins even as he planned to manipulate the knowledge of them for his own ends.’

  Use every man after his desert and who should ’scape whipping.

  ‘What’ll happen to Daniel Westbrook?’

  ‘That’s for the CPS to decide, Doyle, though privately I’m inclined to think he’s suffered enough.’

  ‘I s’pose that slime ball Marcus Traherne won’t get his comeuppance,’ Noakes said morosely.

  ‘He will if I have anything to do with it, Noakesy.’ Markham winked at him, tapping the side of his nose in time-honoured fashion. ‘Ways and means. Ways and means.’

  * * *

  Much later, Markham and Olivia walked arm in arm along deserted pavements now free of snow that rang to the sound of their footsteps.

  ‘What happened to the pictures?’ she asked suddenly. ‘You know — the ones Aubrey Carstone stole from the gallery and hid in his flat at Greygarth?’

  ‘Safely back where they belong, Liv — in a new exhibition space devoted to aediculae. Eventually destined to house the Ned Chester Collection.’

  And with that simple statement, she knew Greygarth’s evil legacy, the house within a house, was finally redeemed
.

  THE END

  Book 7:

  CRIME IN THE

  HEAT

  A fiercely addictive crime thriller

  Catherine Moloney

  For Ma and Percy

  Prologue

  Thinking about it afterwards, DS George Noakes supposed there was something weirdly appropriate about him being on the spot when Rebecca Shawcross’s body was discovered.

  There had been no hint of the impending drama when he arrived at the surgery waiting room at Bromgrove Community Centre. The time was 4:30 on a wet Monday afternoon in June. For a wonder, he appeared to be the only patient with an appointment.

  ‘How come, luv?’ he asked the youthful trainee receptionist, jerking a pudgy finger at the rows of empty chairs.

  ‘Bit of a lull today. Only the locum and ANP in.’ Observing Noakes’s look of bewilderment, she translated patiently. ‘That’s the advanced nurse practitioner.’

  ‘Oh aye,’ he grunted, none the wiser. ‘The missus made an appointment. For my annual review . . . Noakes.’

  ‘Just a minute . . . Ah yes, Sergeant Noakes, isn’t it?’ From the disappointed look she cast him, it was clear he didn’t exactly measure up to her idea of CID’s finest.

  Actually, he’d made a bit of an effort clothes-wise. Muriel had insisted on it. ‘This is one time I’m putting my foot down, George. We have a certain standing in the community after all.’ He hated it when she started on at him. Like that screechy Hyacinth Bucket woman from the sitcom. And once she embarked on the subject of his boss, DI Gilbert ‘Gil’ Markham, she became even worse. ‘It must be a real trial for poor Gilbert to have you trailing about after him looking like some sort of vagrant. He has such refinement.’ She grew positively misty-eyed at the thought of his superior’s dark good looks. The boss tended to have that effect on the opposite sex, he thought sourly. You could bet if he walked into the surgery waiting room, little miss muffet on the desk would be oohing and aahing like James Bond had turned up.

  ‘Mr Noakes?’