Abruptly, Burton registered the gleam of lascivious speculation in Noakes’s eye.
‘What about the last name on the list, sir?’ she enquired, keen to turn the discussion away from Markham’s sexual magnetism. ‘Julian Hoskinson?’
‘I believe he runs a charity shop in the town centre . . . also a committed fundraiser for various community projects: environment, wildlife, LGBT and the like.’
Noakes looked as though his day couldn’t get much worse, activists and tree huggers being guaranteed to bring him out in a rash.
‘What’s the plan then, guv?’
The DI consulted his papers.
‘I want Kate and Doyle to set up an incident room in the management company’s office — it’s a little bungalow to the rear of the complex, next to the car park. You need to report to Gary Coslett from Laneside Properties. He’ll get you sorted with keys and anything else you need. Requisition whatever technical support you need from CID. I’ll clear everything with the DCI in due course.’
Burton felt a little wistful. That meant the DI would be doing an initial recce with Noakes. Then she gave herself a mental shake. Admin and practical stuff were her forte whereas spreadsheets and computers were anathema to her fellow DS. It was a miracle he ever squeaked through his annual appraisal given his dogged resistance to all forms of technical innovation. But that was likely down to some fancy footwork on Markham’s part. His cast-iron loyalty to CID’s resident pachyderm was unfathomable, but as yet no one had yet succeeded in shoehorning Noakes out of the department.
‘Never fear, Kate. You’ll get your chance at interviewing.’ She blushed at the ease with which the DI had read her thoughts, self-consciously shuffling pocketbook and reading glasses back into the smart leather satchel to hide her confusion.
‘You too, Doyle.’ Markham’s austere features held genuine affection. ‘We need to throw everything we’ve got at this case.’
‘What about the DCI, sir?’
‘I believe he’s in meetings for most of today,’ came the bland reply. ‘But of course I’ll be briefing him as soon as the opportunity arises.’ Mentally the DI resolved to square things with Sidney’s long-suffering PA, Miss Peabody. For all her resemblance to a dormouse or some other diminutive creature, past favours meant she could be counted on to run interference and keep Sidney off his back. At least for the time being, while he got the lie of the land.
‘What’s New College Close like, sir?’
‘Well, Kate, at the moment it looks pretty magical blanketed in snow. Picture-postcard in fact.’ He produced some photographs from a folder. ‘These are some estate agent’s particulars, just to give you an idea.’
‘Hmm . . . quite nice,’ she said, contemplating yellow stucco walls and quirky porthole windows which gave the terraced cement properties a cosy feel. ‘Looks like it’s been done up recently,’ she continued, taking in the trim window facings and concentric terracotta tiles radiating out from the portholes.
‘Lemme see.’ Noakes lurched to his feet and peered over her shoulder. ‘Yeah, not bad . . . decent garden too. Mind,’ he said beadily, ‘the hallways in them flats are another story — right tatty, if you ask me.’
‘True,’ Markham agreed. ‘Some of the communal areas are on the dingy side. The place is a mixture of rental and privately owned properties with some social housing, which may account for issues in terms of facilities management.’ Crisply, he added, ‘That’s something I’d like you to go through with Mr Coslett, Kate. See what tensions may have arisen on the estate.’
‘You don’t think this is summat to do with a neighbour’s vendetta do you, guv.’
Noakes plonked himself back down, rasping his bristly chin. ‘Rolling pins at dawn . . .’
‘Unlikely, Sergeant, but we need to explore all eventualities.’
‘Coslett’s a twat an’ no mistake,’ the DS observed.
‘Would that be a term of art, Sergeant?’
The other grinned. ‘C’mon, boss . . . reckon you didn’t take to him neither.’
The DI recalled the facility manager’s ferrety features and sharp-elbowed manner.
‘Well, he was definitely spivvish, but in fairness to the man it was a godawful shock . . . two women found entombed like that.’
Burton shivered. ‘Buried alive,’ she mused. ‘Everyone’s worst nightmare.’
‘Didn’t the Victorians have safety coffins and things?’
Noakes stared at Doyle.
‘Safety coffins?’
‘Yeah, sarge.’ The young DC was animated. ‘Folk were so scared about being buried alive that they had strings attached to their bodies. The strings were connected to bells above ground. If the bells rang, it meant they were still alive.’
‘Chuffing Nora.’
Doyle was pleased with the effect he had produced.
‘Straight up, sarge. They used stuff like glass panels too . . . you know, to check if there was condensation from someone’s breath.’
‘Freaking paranoid, if you ask me.’
‘Well they weren’t so advanced back then. Couldn’t be sure the medicos would get it right.’
‘Dawn MacAlinden tried to scratch her way out,’ put in Burton, recalling them to the matter at hand.
They fell silent once again. The outer office was quiet now, sounds of revelry having subsided. Beyond the DI’s window, with its unrivalled view of the station car park, large cottony snowflakes swirled and drifted against pewter skies.
‘Feels all wrong, don’t it?’ Noakes said finally. ‘Happiest time of the year — “Mistletoe and Wine” an’ all that . . . Then two dead women turn up under a bed.’ He scratched angrily at his head, causing frowsy tufts to spring upright like so many spines on a stickleback. ‘I mean, what harm did they ever do to anyone? Jus’ two harmless old biddies having a nice cup of tea an’ a bit of a chat . . . an’ next minute it’s Hammer House of Horror.’
‘The answer lies somewhere in their past, Sergeant,’ Markham said decisively. ‘Highly unlikely this a random attack.’ His mouth twisted. No need to add, whatever the DCI may think.
‘Are we gonna start the interviews today, guv?’
‘I’ve arranged to call on Mr and Mrs Ledwidge first, Noakes.’
‘The padre?’
‘That’s right.’ Markham stifled a yawn. ‘Apparently, Mrs Bussell was quite friendly with them. Brian Ledwidge has some pull with the current incumbent of St James’s Church—’
‘That sooty-looking building at the bottom of Chapel Street?’
‘The very same, Sergeant. They’ve agreed we can use the church hall for interviews — hopefully sometime this afternoon. Anyone we don’t manage to see today will be on the list for first thing tomorrow morning.’
‘Any point checking in with Dawn MacAlinden’s husband, sir?’
‘You can try, Kate, but I doubt he’s fit to be interviewed. See what the GP says.’ He sighed at the recollection of the sandy-haired little man’s devastation. ‘I want you and Doyle to prepare preliminary profiles on the victims ready for tomorrow.’
‘You don’ think . . . well, they couldn’t have been . . . I mean, it’s not likely they were . . .’ Noakes’s face was brick red.
The DI gazed at him in mystification.
‘Spit it out, Sergeant.’
‘The killer wouldn’t have been trying to say they were involved . . . in a relationship, like . . . what with them holding hands an’ that . . . ?’ Suddenly the cynosure of three pairs of eyes, he became even more tongue-tied. ‘It’s jus’ that after the last investigation . . . there’s nowt so queer as folk . . .’ Realizing what he had said, the DS turned even redder.
Time to put him out of his misery.
‘Ah, I see your point, Sergeant,’ Markham said levelly. ‘Quite right. We definitely need to be sensitive to the full sexual spectrum.’
Noakes’s colour subsided, his complexion reverting from full-on coronary to its usual corned-beef hue.
Doyle was mo
re nonchalant. ‘It’s not likely though, is it, sir? I mean, they’d have been well past that kind of thing, wouldn’t they?’
Oh, the casual cruelty of youth.
‘I don’t think we can make any assumptions at this stage, Constable,’ the DI said gently, to Noakes’s evident gratification. ‘Right, you and Kate can shoot off now. Any problems with Gary Coslett, just ring my mobile. Noakes and I will take the Ledwidges, then round up as many residents as possible for interviews. Get the incident room set up and join us at the church hall as soon as you can.’
Saluting smartly, the pair hastened to comply.
Left alone, Markham and Noakes contemplated each other across the DI’s desk.
‘This one’s got you worried, guv.’
It was a statement.
‘And then some, Noakes.’ The DI crossed to the window and stared bleakly across the station car park. ‘It was the sense back there in Marian Bussell’s flat of someone deriving exquisite pleasure from that ghastly tableau, like some sort of wicked impresario. Revelling in the thought of them fermenting in the dark . . . toughened like cured meat . . . mummified for us to find.’
‘Yeah.’ The DS nodded his massive head. ‘He musta known we’d find ’em . . . No amount of Febreze’d get rid of that pong.’
‘They were like those bog bodies they dug out of the peat . . . but somehow fleshy,’ Markham shuddered, ‘with a half-digested look as if the maggots had got started on them.’
It occurred to Noakes that there was such a thing as having too much imagination. The half-formed request to swing by Greggs for a breakfast roll died on his lips.
The DI was still locked in his own morbid reflections. Unable to indulge his feelings in front of Burton and Doyle, he knew he could safely let down the portcullis with Noakes.
‘I’ll never forget those twisted faces, Noakes,’ he muttered. ‘God knows what agonies they must have endured at the end.’
‘He wanted ’em to suffer alright . . . but,’ the DS asked with honest perplexity, ‘what could they have done that was so bad they had to die like that . . . ?’
A secret in their past . . . a crime . . . an unavenged wrong . . .
The DI shook his head as though to dispel the murk from his vision.
‘Whatever it is,’ he said determinedly, ‘we’re going to drag it into the light.’
He turned from the window. ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘Let’s be on our way.’
3. Stirrings
Even though it was mid-morning, the day was overcast, almost dark. But the snow was satisfyingly ‘deep and crisp and even’. A small gaggle of students playing truant from one of the local schools were happily engaged in throwing snowballs at unsuspecting pedestrians and drivers but swiftly dispersed as the two detectives crunched across the car park. Normally Noakes would have read them the riot act, but the festive season had rendered him uncharacteristically benign and he merely grunted before unlocking his battered saloon with the usual muttering about missing ice scrapers and broken demisters.
Eventually they were underway, though at the pace of a funeral cortège given the state of the roads. The portable car heater belched out a steady stream of heat, creating a passable cosy fug.
‘Won’t you be wanting to speak to that lass who found the bodies, guv?’
‘Good point, Noakes . . . Shona, wasn’t it?’
He recalled the teenager’s damp blotched face and desperate distress.
‘Poor little bint,’ the other said ruminatively. ‘Kept banging on about seeing a robin or summat an’ it being a sign of good luck . . . sounded a bit delirious.’
Markham remembered her poignant desperation.
‘She’d spotted a robin redbreast in the garden,’ he said sadly, remembering the sighting by St Chad’s cemetery and his own very different interpretation. Dies irae, dies illa.
‘Oh aye,’ said his DS, unconscious of the other’s dark reflections. ‘Cute little fellas. Nothing beats one of ’em on a Christmas card. Mind, the missus says it’s a scandal the way there aren’t any proper religious ones in the shops . . . she wants a crib an’ shepherds an’ kings, the full monty . . . otherwise she says it’s disrespectful . . .’
Thinking of the depressing procession of whey-faced Madonnas and clayey Infants he had received from Muriel Noakes in past years — ‘Botticelli or bust’, as Olivia put it irreverently — Markham couldn’t help but feel there was something to be said for a nice, secular robin redbreast.
‘Good kid that Shona,’ Noakes continued. ‘Sounded like she got on well with the old lady.’ A frown darkened his features. ‘My Nat said community service wasn’t much cop an’ she allus got the grumpy ones.’
Pneumatic, perma-tanned Natalie Noakes — a twenty-year-old beautician (‘she felt university was overrated,’ Muriel pronounced after less than stellar A level results) — was the apple of her doting father’s eye. Doyenne of Bromgrove’s less salubrious nightclubs, it was difficult to imagine her selflessly dispensing good cheer to the town’s geriatric community. Her tastes ran in another direction entirely.
‘Mind you, these days they prob’ly match ’em up better,’ Noakes added. ‘An’ it’s not compulsory like it used to be . . . so it’s only the kids who really like that sort of thing end up doing it . . .’
‘As you say, it sounded like she’d definitely formed a bond with Mrs Bussell . . . Enjoyed hearing her talk about what Hope was like “in olden times”.’
‘A sight better than what it is now,’ the DS groused. ‘I jus’ can’t be doing with all the PC bollocks an’ management crip crap. I mean, listening to that Atkins woman, it’s like she’s speaking some foreign language. D’you remember what she was like in the community centre case, guv?’ He broke into a shrill falsetto comically at odds with his normal guttural rumble. ‘“We have to give children ownership of their emotions and avoid binary thinking.” What the bleeding hell does that mean? In my day, you jus’ got on with it an’ none of this namby-pamby stuff . . .’ The DS didn’t add, It made me the man I am today, but the words hung in the air.
Avoiding the well-worn theme of a terminal decline in educational standards, Markham observed, ‘You’ll just have to grin and bear it, Noakesy. What happened almost certainly has its roots in Mrs Bussell’s past, including her teaching career. Ms Atkins could be a useful conduit for information, so we don’t want to alienate her.’
‘But where does MacAlinden fit in, then?’ As the car skidded slightly, Noakes cursed the gritters in colourful language before returning to the fray. ‘She was a student at Hope an’ Mrs B used to teach her, right?’
‘Correct.’
‘So were the pair of ’em up to summat dodgy in them days or what . . . ? I mean, how did they manage to piss someone off so badly he decided to bury ’em alive?’
‘Your guess is as good as mine, Sergeant.’ Markham gazed at the blanketed landscape, once more feeling the ache to lie down in its chill, compacted ice. ‘We don’t know whether they were killed for something that happened at Hope or later after they had both left. It might have nothing to do with the school, but it’s a coincidence that both women were there and I—’
‘Don’ like coincidences,’ Noakes finished for him.
‘Precisely.’
They were now approaching New College Close.
‘If you head round the back, we should be able to park there,’ Markham instructed. ‘There’s one of those unadopted lanes at the rear — Beech Drive, I think it is — and then you’ve got the playing fields behind.’
‘It’s a wonder the council hasn’t snaffled ’em for development,’ the DS said. ‘Y’know . . . more flats or shops . . .’
‘I believe there’s an arrangement with various local schools for them to use those fields for sport and extra-curricular activities.’
‘Smoking an’ doing drugs more like,’ Noakes muttered. His boss wisely chose not to hear.
* * *
The parking area was situated at the bottom of a
fairly steep slope next to the undercroft (‘For Residents Only’).
As they pulled in, they were surprised to see a little knot of people, muffled up against the freezing temperatures, outside the modest bungalow to the right of the undercroft. Burton and Doyle were there too, along with a bored-looking Gary Coslett. There was some arm-waving and the sound of raised voices before an upright silver-haired figure shepherded the group away.
‘What was all that about?’ the DI enquired once they were back inside Laneside’s HQ.
‘Well they’re angry, innit?’ Coslett volunteered.
‘Why might that be, sir?’ Markham felt a strong antipathy towards the weaselly young man, whose close-set pebble-like eyes bore an expression of resentment and distrust.
‘Feel the police aren’t keeping them informed for one thing.’
‘And for another?’ growled Noakes.
‘They want to know about extra security, police patrols,’ the facilities manager replied, with a wary eye on the sergeant, who bore more than a passing resemblance to a distempered, dishevelled gorilla. ‘With a murderer on the loose, it’s about protection, right?’
‘To deal with your first point, Mr Coslett, there will be a press conference shortly,’ the DI replied stonily. Though God knew, residents were unlikely to find Sidney’s preferred modus operandi — pinning it all on some crazed psychopath — particularly reassuring. ‘We aren’t currently in a position to say more than that two residents have been found dead underneath a bed in circumstances that we regard as suspicious. To speculate at this point would be irresponsible and might cause panic.’
‘But look here, Inspector — we’re talking serial killer, right?’
‘I’ll thank you not to bandy such terms about in my hearing, Mr Coslett.’ Markham’s voice was chillier than a Siberian wind. ‘As things stand, we are dealing with two victims and awaiting the results of a post-mortem. This is not,’ he added scathingly, ‘The Amityville Horror, and sensationalism can only cause distress to Dawn MacAlinden’s widower.’
Detective Markham Mysteries Box Set Page 151