Who Dies Beneath

by L. J. Hutton

  “About the only consolation we could give the families was that there was no evidence of penetrative sex.” Carol rolled her eyes and took another hefty swig of her wine, adding, “All the evidence points to Pickersleigh being a nasty groper, but unable to get it up enough to rape. Jeff,” the head of the forensic team she worked with, “had some revolting photographs to plough through, and we came to the conclusion that Pickersleigh had masturbated in the cottage, but oddly enough, in the main room, not in the bedrooms where the girls had been held.”

  “But what about outside?” Bill wanted to know.

  “Hmmm, good call on your part. Jeff definitely got impressions of boots at the lip of the quarry, which matched the ones Pickersleigh was wearing when he got found. So you were spot on there. He’d carried the girls up that way. Jeff even found fibres where the one tartan skirt had snagged on a twig. If nobody’s getting prosecuted for killing Pickersleigh himself, then at least you’re in the brass’ good books for clearing the girls’ disappearance in an indisputable way.”

  Then she leaned over and topped Bill’s wine up.

  “Carol?” he could see just by her expression that there was more.

  “I’m afraid that other little girl matches nobody in the system.”

  “What?”

  “Oh, it gets worse,” Sylvia told him, to give Carol some respite. “Carol looked at her teeth and thought that it wasn’t British dental work.”

  Carol nodded. “I’d say this kid belonged to some illegals, over here to do the picking on local farms for the summer, because that dental work is definitely eastern European. Whoever her parents are, they must have been torn to bits between going to the police, and getting prosecuted themselves and being sent back to wherever they were from, or finding their little girl. And she was younger, this time, much younger. Going on what Tim said of Pickersleigh’s preferences, we wondered whether the two girls before had fought back more, and so he went to as young as he was attracted to, in the hope of getting a more passive child.”

  “How old?” Bill asked, dreading the answer.

  “Well she was small for her age, but even so, I’d say absolute maximum nine, and more likely barely eight.”

  Bill shook his head in despair. “Poor little mite. I know I shouldn’t say this, but there’s a part of me that’s glad that someone got to Pickersleigh and frightened him to death. Because he must surely have terrified that child in the short time he had her ...please tell me she definitely came after the two I found and not before?”

  “Oh definitely after, and by at least a week,” Carol confirmed.

  “Thank God for that! We didn’t miss the clues for that long a time. At least we can bracket the time of her suffering between then and when the monster died.”

  “Yes we can, and in truth, Bill, like with the other two, I’d be more inclined to say that he only had her a few days. Jeff combed through the refuse which was still in a bag in the corner of the cottage, and going by the dates on the sandwich wrappers, in neither case did he hang on to them beyond about three days. I know it’s still not good, but at least their suffering was brief.”

  “Not brief enough,” Bill sighed, his thoughts wandering back to that previous conversation with his friends where he’d thought justice wasn’t being served. Well somebody had served up a rougher justice on Pickersleigh than any court could have delivered, and Bill found it unsettling that he wasn’t as bothered as he thought he ought to be about that.

  There was a pause, and then Sylvia asked the question Bill had been dreading,

  “Did you really stumble upon those girls, Bill, or did you have a hint? I know you’ve said that there was no evidence, but we know you and your hunches. Was it one of those?”

  Bill looked at his two friends. Dare he tell them the truth? And if he did, would that be the end of a lovely friendship, or would Carol be marching him off to some psychiatrist friend of hers?

  “What does that face mean?” Sylvia teased. “Don’t you trust us?”

  “It’s not me trusting you. It’s more that I’m not sure that you’ll believe me.”

  Carol leaned in towards him. “Would it help if I said Sylvia had a very odd conversation with Nick?”

  Nick was Bill’s friend Dr Nick Robbins, one of the archaeologists working out of the Hive library and archive in the centre of Worcester, and someone who had shared Bill’s first encounter with what could only be called the arcane.

  “Oh.”

  Sylvia smiled. “Oh, indeed ...so come on then, what’s so odd about this that you think we’re going to think you’ve lost the plot?”

  Easing himself into a more comfortable position on his chair, Bill realised that this was make or break time.

  “You’d better get another bottle of that wine out, or something stronger, and put a good brew of coffee on – you’re going to need it!”

  For more than an hour he told them about his and Nick’s first brush with the weird and wonderful, then going on to his own encounter with Tapio, who had turned out to be anything but the forlorn little lad from Finland, just here to go to school.

  “So,” he concluded, having already answered a multitude of questions, “I need to tell you about my encounter with an apple tree,” and filled them in on his experience in the orchard.

  When he’d finally finished, his two friends were regarding him with little short of amazement, but to his relief, neither of them were laughing their socks off at him yet, nor looking at him in outright disbelief.

  Finally Carol said, “I believe you ...if only because it makes so much sense of why you went straight to those girls like some homing pigeon. Oh don’t worry, Bill, I’m sure that the others swallowed your story about the walk. But don’t forget, Sylvia and I have known you for years. We know what you’re like when you’ve got the bit between your teeth over a case.”

  “And it might also help you if we tell you that we, too, have had a very odd encounter,” Sylvia added.

  Now it was Bill’s turn to sit up and look curious. “Oh? Have you? When was this?”

  Sylvia smile inscrutably. “Do you remember DS Merlin Roberts, ‘Robbie’?”

  “Robbie? God, yes! Had a great respect for him. I was never happy with that cock and bull story about him and that chap who came up from London going off into retirement together, though. That never rang true.”

  “Then let us tell you our story,” Carol said, and began with them being called out to Weord Manor. By the time she had gone through the discovery of multiple bodies, and the way that Robbie and former DCI Drake had ‘discovered’ link after link to missing persons cases, all of which came back to the same old house which had become a school, Bill was beginning to get a worrying sense of déjà vu.

  “We never saw Drake again,” Carol concluded with, “but when we saw Robbie for the last time, he said that they were going somewhere where it would be impossible for anyone to contact them. Now we couldn’t begin to tell you where that was, but my impression was that he was being absolutely literal in what he said.”

  “You think they found something like Nick and I did, don’t you?”

  “Yes I do, and in which case, I think that something spiritual definitely guided you towards finding those bodies.”

  Sylvia nodded. “And I think whatever it is that you’ve been exposed to, has made you sensitised enough that you’re picking up on whatever strange link there is between your original case with Sanay Costa, and Tim Chesterton’s one with Justin Pickersleigh. What you can do with it, though, is a wholly different matter.”

  “Well thank you for the vote of confidence, and for not trying to get me locked up in a secure ward somewhere,” Bill said gratefully. “I’m not sure where that leaves me, either, but it’s a relief to know that I can come and talk to you two about it.”

  “What I can say,” Carol said, “is that nothing has crossed my autopsy table, nor any other reports I’ve come across aside from that case with the sword, which would lead me to think th
at these two are simply the end in a long line of such cases. We might have overlooked one or two, but I’m sure my colleagues elsewhere would have all been shouting for input if there was a catalogue of corpses like those two in some distant county. I’ve already had some probing questions over our cases, because we’re a curious lot, but nobody’s yet said, ‘ooh, I’ve got one like that too!’ So whatever it is, Bill, it’s native to these parts.”

  Chapter 8

  HE GAVE HER A WAN SMILE. “If that’s meant to reassure me, I’m afraid it hasn’t.”

  “Sorry,” Carol apologised. “But there is one thing you can do for me, Bill. Add my sword thrust victim, Damien Farrah, to your list. Something about his death never sat right with me – and I don’t just mean the odd way in which he died. I see a lot of grieving families, and there’s no one-size-fits-all with how it takes people, but even taking that into account, there was something very off about Farrah’s family.”

  Bill’s curiosity was piqued. “Off? In what way?”

  Carol puffed her cheeks out. “I suppose I could say it was the way that they came in mob-handed to see his body, but then I’ve had lots of families where they’ve all wanted to come in – especially from those whose religions demand a fast burial or cremation. By the time they’ve got their loved one to the undertakers, there’s often no time for a few days when the remainder of the family can go to a chapel of rest and pay their respects. I totally understand that.”

  “But with a surname like Farrah he doesn’t sound like that – more upper class English through and through.”

  “Exactly! And that’s what they looked like. But for a start off, it was a baking hot day – one of those freakish spring days we had back in April when it was hotter than most of our summer days, and which came on us out of the blue. All of us were rolling our sweater sleeves up, or peeling sweaters off altogether because we were roasting. But Mrs Farrah, his mum, kept her sleeves buttoned right down, and it wasn’t because she was cold! The sweat was practically standing out on her forehead.”

  “Oh bugger,” Bill sighed, immediately guessing where Carol was going with this. “Another battered wife, you reckon?”

  Carol nodded. “Unless I’ve totally lost my touch, yes. I saw her wince at the way her husband held her arm. There was nothing supportive about that, Bill, he was keeping her under control, and I’m sure she had bruises under those long sleeves which hurt like hell with his grip. But what can you do? I managed to slip her my card and told her to contact me if she needed any help, but you have to be so careful in those situations. The last thing I wanted was to make things worse for her.

  “The father was a big man, and you could see that in a few years time Damien would have been as portly. Not particularly strong men compared to another fitter man, but way big enough to be able to dominate a woman, and especially a dainty lady like Mrs Farrah. Well there were two brothers with them, who absolutely ‘had to’ come in too. The one was physically small like his mother, but had the same hard eyes as their father. He stood right close to his brother, who was a big ox of a lad, and I’d guess the youngest, and who kept trying to shuffle sideways away from the other one. But each time he did it, the smaller brother just closed the gap until the big lad was wedged up against the wall – it was most bizarre! The little one was in charge, even though he was half his brother’s size.

  “And there was a sister, too. You have to remember that, at this stage, I wasn’t party to the investigation’s findings of the woman he’d become smitten with, so my immediate reaction was to ask if she was Damien’s wife. Did I ever get my head snapped off by the father over that! I was told in no uncertain terms that none of the ex-Mrs Farrahs were to be allowed to see the body, and that they were going to excluded from the funeral altogether.”

  “What did Lucinda Smythe say to that?” Bill wondered, having got the distinct impression that DI Smythe had been the sharp one of Shropshire team, and not a woman to miss a hint like that.

  “Made a note of that and said she’d be visiting all four ex-wives to have a word with them.”

  “Four?” Bill was shocked. “How old was he?”

  “Thirty-nine.”

  “Bloody hell, he got through them a bit fast, didn’t he?”

  “The last I heard from Lucinda, none of them had lasted beyond three or four years with him, and the last of them had been a while back. In his earlier days he’d been quite a looker, you know, and Lucinda had got the impression that all of them had chased him, rather than the other way around. They were the ones who pushed for a wedding, and I think his father was hoping young Damien would start knocking out heirs like rabbits. Significantly, there’s not one kid between the four, but I saw Lucinda because she came to me with the medical records of the four, asking me to take a look. Every one of them had had at least one miscarriage, Bill, and Lucinda reckoned that Damien had been heavy-handed with them.”

  “Would none of them testify to that?”

  “It looked very much as though his father had bought their silence. One-off payments of a substantial kind, but I think in every case those women just wanted to be free of him. Even though it might have been the lesser amount compared to a regular alimony, Lucinda said that all of them just wanted to get as far away from him as possible. The first two had remarried to nice normal chaps, and had solid alibis for the time of Damien’s death – one being a nurse on shift, and the other one away on a family holiday in Turkey. Wife number three, Lucinda said, was such a wreck she never left her house any more, living with her mum, who was at her wits end with trying to cope with a daughter who still screamed the house down every night.”

  “And wife number four?”

  “Had to be interviewed by video link from South Africa, where she’s been since four months after the divorce.”

  “Good grief! That’s one hell of a way to go to get away from someone.”

  “Isn’t it! But I think that tells you what sort of man Damien Farrah turned out to be. The only reason he hadn’t had multiple restraining orders on him was because his family was well-heeled enough to be able to pay hush-money.”

  Carol poured them all another coffee before saying, “But the thing is, I didn’t see the similarity until you told me what an evil shit Justin Pickersleigh turned out to be. You wouldn’t see the connection between an upper-crust bully-boy whose money kept him out of trouble; a meek mouse of a mummy’s boy; and your inner-city delinquent, would you? Not without the apple tree link, anyway...”

  “...But once you see them all as pretty violent predators on those weaker than themselves...” Bill finished for her.

  “Exactly! And even so, we almost needed to have Sanay Costa before the link becomes apparent.”

  “Then I promise I will give Damien Farrah’s case a thorough looking at as soon as I get back to the station,” he promised. “But just as a thought... Do you think it’s possible that Damien died the most violent death of the three, because of all of them, he wouldn’t have hesitated to have fought back? Pickersleigh was never going to stand up to a grown woman, I don’t think. And for all of Sanay’s bluster, I can tell you that it’s his mother who rules the roost in his family too. But the man you’ve just described makes me wonder whether his instant response was to not be tricked in whatever way they’re doing it, but to become violent? Because I’d expect it to be the other way around if we were looking at a normal escalation of violence on the killer’s part, wouldn’t you?”

  Carol immediately picked up on what he meant. “Of course! You’d expect Sanay, as the latest victim to be the one whose death was most violent. But as best we know, Farrah was the first. So why was he the one who incited such a violent response? If – and I do understand that we can’t be sure about this – we are looking at just one killer, then that’s a very atypical pattern. On the other hand, if we’re looking at a separate killer for each one, then what’s going on with the locations? Why are they so alike?”

  Those were questions Bill couldn’t
begin to answer while he was with Carol and Sylvia, but once back at his borrowed desk, the first thing he did was to pull up Damien’s case file. It was at that point that he saw the other bookmark he’d put on the computer, which was for the old farmer.

  “Why not,” he muttered, as he pulled a brand new memory stick out of his pocket, ripped open its packet, and copied both files across to it. That way he’d be able to look at them when he was back at his own desk if needed, and with that thought in mind, he also copied Sanay’s file. Yet it was at that point that he realised that Justin’s case was the oddity in that it was south of the Shropshire border, albeit not by many miles. Had someone not been aware that they’d crossed the county line?

  If you went by the main roads there were the usual large signposts telling you which county you’d just come into. But what if someone was using the back ways? If you wanted to get someone like these men to a quiet spot with the intention of doing them harm, then wouldn’t you give them directions which would take them away from any traffic cameras? That made sense to Bill, but another thing occurred to him, and he dug out his large-scale map again. Yes, looked at geographically, where Justin had dumped his bodies and where he himself had then been found, were both in the same tumble of hills and valleys as where Sanay had been found.

  So what of Damien? Finding the coordinates of the deposition site, Bill found it on his map and then swore softly. It was almost exactly halfway between the two they already had, and that troubled him enormously. Yet even as he read the report and looked at the map, he knew he’d have a terrible job convincing anyone else that Damien’s case should be looked at with the others. For a start off, this time it was no semi-deserted old farm orchard, and nor was it down in a river valley. This time it was up on a hill on a good sized farm, and the farmer was not so much growing the apples himself as the trees. He had a few prime specimens of good cider apple trees, and was taking cuttings off them and grafting them onto modern root stocks – a common enough practice – but then he was selling the saplings on.