Bones In the River

by Zoe Sharp

  Nick nodded slowly. There were times when he thought of Pollock as an unreconstructed old-generation copper. A bit of a chauvinist perhaps, certainly not very politically correct. But at his core, Pollock had an understanding of what made people tick that was sharp and savvy.

  Nick was still searching for the words to express this, when the door to the interview room opened and Ms Chadwick stuck her head out into the corridor.

  “We’re ready for you,” she said with another of her sniffs. “My client wishes to make a statement—against my advice, I might add.”

  “Right you are,” Pollock said and, when the head withdrew, he murmured, “This ought to be good…”

  When they were seated again with the recorder running, Dylan launched into his story, about driving home from Kirkby Stephen along the Mallerstang valley that day in autumn, about three or four months after Jordan was born.

  “I was just goin’ into that narrow stretch before Outhgill, where there isn’t room for two cars to pass side-by-side, when who comes t’other way but my ’Vonne, headin’ down toward Kirkby. She nearly runs head-on into me—goin’ like a right idiot, she was. I had to back up or neither of us would’ve got through.”

  “Are you quite sure this is relevant, Ms Chadwick?” Pollock asked.

  “If you’d let him finish, detective inspector, then we’ll see, won’t we?”

  Pollock sat back and waved Dylan on. Nick studied the man’s face as he spoke, looking for the tells of a liar. Dylan, he’d noticed, tended to get shirty when he thought he wasn’t going to be believed, but spoke with far more apparent confidence when he was telling an outright lie, almost over-egging it. He was picking up neither of those traits.

  “Well, I stopped to give her what for, drivin’ like that, only I saw she was on her own in the car. She was bletherin’ on about the school callin’ to say our Jess had fallen off the slide in the playground. Knocked herself out good and proper, so they reckoned, and they’d sent for an ambulance. About how she had to get to the school before the ambulance got there, or ’Vonne wouldn’t know for certain where they was takin’ her.”

  “What was your reaction?” Nick asked, knowing that, if it was Sophie who was hurt, nothing would have kept him away.

  “What d’you think?” Dylan’s tone was scornful. “I wanted to know what she’d done with my…with the baby. Who was lookin’ after him? She’s so ditzy half the time, I could believe she might’a just run out the house and left him.”

  “But she hadn’t.”

  “No, she hadn’t,” he agreed. “She gabbled somethin’ about how Owen had got him and she was off like a rocket.”

  “You knew he’d been at the house earlier in the day?”

  “Yeah, he’d been puttin’ a new gearbox in that old Escort. And he was good with the kids,” he added, almost grudgingly. “They seemed to like him.”

  “So you weren’t…surprised or alarmed to hear your wife had left the children in his care?”

  “Well, no, I s’pose not. Not really. Still got there as fast as I could, like.”

  Dylan paused long enough for Pollock to prompt him with a careful, “And?”

  He looked up then, but Nick could see his gaze wasn’t in the room any longer.

  “Don’t remember the rest of the drive back, if I’m honest. I do remember rushin’ into the house, though, findin’ Owen in the kitchen, holdin’ my kid in his arms, rockin’ him. It was the look on his face that did it, stopped me in my tracks, it did. Don’t know how to describe it, even—a kind of wonder and pride and…love.”

  He shifted in his chair, restless with embarrassment at the memory. Not a bloke who found it easy to talk about his feelings, Nick would bet. He kept his face impassive, knew without looking that Pollock would be doing the same. Sure enough, Dylan flicked them both an aggressive little glance, just to check they weren’t mocking him, before he continued.

  “I–I don’t mind admitting, it proper shook me, did that. Not just the way he was holdin’ him, but…I s’pose it was the first time I’d seen ’em together—real close, like. And that was when it really hit me.”

  “What did?”

  “The likeness,” Dylan said. “I always thought it was a load of rubbish, when people say, ‘oh, he looks just like his dad,’ or whatever. Family resemblance and all that. But when I saw Owen with Jordan that day… Well, there weren’t no use denyin’ it any longer, even to myself.”

  “And what did you do then?” Pollock’s voice was almost gentle.

  “I asked him, straight out, didn’t I? Should’ve stopped to think about it, but”—he shrugged—“by the time I realised that, it was too late. I said to him, ‘Is he yours?’ and he never even took his eyes off the baby’s face. He just said, ‘Aye, he is,’ real quiet, like. And that were it.”

  “What was, Mr Elliot?”

  Dylan glanced at his solicitor, as if needing the reassurance. She sniffed and gave him a slight nod. He swallowed.

  “I lost my temper, didn’t I? Same as any red-blooded man would’ve done. Started yellin’ at him, and the kid were screamin’ at the top of his lungs and I just…hit him.”

  “Jordan?” Pollock asked, sharper now.

  “No—Owen,” Dylan said, his voice hollow. “With what he’d just admitted—what I thought he was admittin’, about shaggin’ my wife, passin’ his kid off as mine—what did you expect? I belted him.”

  “With what?”

  “My fist, what else? Proper left to the chin he never saw comin’. One punch. Knocked his lights out for him.”

  “You hit him, when he was holding your child?” Nick couldn’t stop himself from asking the question, despite Pollock’s twitch of irritation alongside him.

  “He’d just admitted the kid wasn’t my child at all, hadn’t he?” Dylan shot back, as if that made it all OK. “’Sides, he stayed on his feet for a moment, even if his eyes had rolled back. Time enough for me to grab the boy from him, before he went down, like. Dropped like a stone, he did, right there on the kitchen floor.”

  There it was, Nick thought, a confession if ever there was one. So why did Dylan look like he’d just played his best Get Out of Jail Free card?

  Pollock must have been thinking the same. He cleared his throat and said, “Mr Elliot, just to be clear—you admit to hitting Owen Liddell, hard enough that he fell, unconscious, onto your kitchen floor?”

  Dylan shrugged. “Yeah.”

  Nick glanced at his file again. “Did Mr Liddell fall forward or backwards?”

  Dylan frowned, his face pulled into a scowl by the force of his concentration. “I dunno. He just sort’a dropped. I wasn’t paying him no attention, what with the boy screechin’ in my ear. I just got outta there.”

  “Where did you go?”

  “Stuck him in the car and just drove, didn’t I? Wasn’t givin’ much notice to direction.”

  “For how long?”

  “Couple of hours, maybe three or four? Ended up down at Morecambe. Sat on the seafront and looked out across the bay.”

  “Why Morecambe?”

  Dylan shifted again in his seat, then slouched a little further. “Remembered that story what was all over the news, from a few years back, about them Chinese cockle pickers who got caught by the tide. How fast it turns there, with it being so flat. They used to say the incomin’ tide across the bay at Morecambe could outrun a gallopin’ horse. And I watched it start to come in, and I looked at Jordan, all wrapped up, asleep in his blanket on the back seat, and I thought about… That is, I considered…” His voice petered out into a harsh whisper. He took a long unsteady breath. “But in the end, I couldn’t do it. Couldn’t even do it then, right after I found out—when I thought I’d found out… So, how you could think I’d lay a finger on him now, all these years later…”

  Don’t mind laying more than a finger on your wife, though, do you?

  Beneath the level of the table, Nick’s hands tightened convulsively. Not trusting his voice, he left it to Poll
ock to ask the next question.

  “What about Owen Liddell? When did you get rid of the body?”

  Dylan gaped. His eyes flew briefly to the solicitor. Nick recognised both alarm and accusation in the glare.

  “What you talkin’ about? I never buried him! He were fine when I left, and he’d gone by the time I got back! He must’ve come round and taken himself off, mustn’t he? And there weren’t no blood, neither.” He gulped down a breath, like he’d just been running. “If you want to point the finger at anyone, mate, you should be lookin’ at them gyppos! They was there, with their horses and their caravans, on Water Yat that day, when they’d no good reason to be. And the next day, they was gone!”

  94

  “Grace? You in here?” Blenkinship called as he stepped through the open front door of the farmhouse.

  He’d driven from Workington to Penrith as fast as he dared, then wasted precious time searching Grace McColl’s desk for the SD card Ty Frost admitted giving to her. Now, he’d tracked her to this crime scene and his time and temper were wearing thin.

  Instead of Grace, it was a small female PC who hustled out of one of the doorways off the hall in response to his shout.

  “Excuse me, sir, but I’m afraid you can’t—”

  “Lead CSI Blenkinship, pet. Where’s CSI McColl?” His ID was in his hand and he was already looking past her, already moving past her. He stuck his head into what proved to be a kitchen. A white-suited figure was kneeling on the floor, its back to the doorway, bending low to inspect the tiles in front of the Aga. “Grace?”

  The figure straightened and twisted to face him.

  “Oh, hiya Chris,” Tony Marsh said. “Though, if you can mistake me for Grace McColl, you might want to think about an eye-test, mate, eh?”

  Tony was close to retirement age, a rotund figure whose belly strained against the restriction of his Tyvek oversuit. What little hair remained on his head had long-since turned grey, as had his beard. He and Blenkinship worked together for several years in Carlisle before the reshuffle of personnel last summer.

  “Where is she?” Blenkinship demanded, fighting to keep his tone even.

  As it was, Marsh regarded him impassively for a moment before he said, “Don’t know, mate. She rang Steve. Steve rang me. Next thing I know, I’m sent up here to carry on processing the scene. By the time I arrived, she’d already legged it.”

  “Dammit. She should have checked in with me before she went haring off somewhere else. She’s no grasp of protocol, that woman.” His eyes flicked briefly around the room. “I don’t suppose Mr Pollock’s still about, is he?”

  Marsh shook his head. “’Fraid not. He carted Elliot back to Penrith for questioning. If that lad spends any more time in the cells up there, they’ll be charging him rent.”

  “Dylan Elliot?” Blenkinship asked. “I thought he’d been cleared…?”

  “That was for young Jordan. This is in connection with Owen Liddell’s death, apparently. ‘Round up the usual suspects’, eh?”

  “But…Liddell is my case,” Blenkinship grumbled.

  “Well, you’re welcome to take over if you feel that way about it.” Marsh heaved himself to his feet with a grunt. “Besides anything else, tiled floors are murder on my knees these days.”

  “Oh, you may as well carry on now you’ve started,” Blenkinship said quickly. He shook his head. “What the hell does she think she’s playing at…?”

  “As I understood it, sir,” the PC said tartly, “Mr Pollock tried to get hold of you, but nobody knew where you were and your phone was switched off.”

  He turned to find her hovering in the hallway behind him and eyed her with disfavour. It was mutual. “I don’t suppose you know where CSI McColl has disappeared off to?”

  “Well, believe it or not, it just so happens I do…”

  95

  Nick and DI Pollock were back in the CID office, staring at the murder boards for Jordan Elliot and Owen Liddell. Dylan Elliot was back in a holding cell, and the indomitable Ms Chadwick was back coiled in the centre of her web somewhere, Nick presumed—probably still sniffing.

  “So, Dylan is pointing the finger at the Gypsies,” Pollock said to the assembled detectives. In fact, with Yardley taking paternity leave there were only two others—DS Rebecca Hodgson and DC Asif Khan. “The question is, do we believe him?”

  “It is a bit…convenient, is it not, sir?” Khan said.

  And Nick recalled Grace’s comment that the Horse Fair was considered a good time to settle old scores. For locals to get their own back on their neighbours and to blame the Gypsies.

  “Maybe, lad,” Pollock agreed. “But, as far as we know, Dylan is unaware that there’s a strong possibility Jordan’s real mum is a member of the Travelling community.”

  “He could have worked it out, sir,” Nick said. “After all, it was common knowledge that Owen was seeing a Gypsy girl. As soon as we told Dylan that Yvonne wasn’t Jordan’s mother, he could easily have realised what that meant.”

  “And do we have only Dylan’s word for it that there were any Gypsies camped at Water Yat, around the time we believe Liddell was killed?” Hodgson asked.

  Nick frowned. “I’m sure Dave said something about Vano Smith…” He moved over to Yardley’s vacant desk and leafed through his notes. “Ah, yes, here we go. Smith was done for a minor traffic offence in Kirkby Stephen, the day before the last text message was sent.”

  “Not conclusive, but enough to bring the lad in for questioning, that’s for sure,” Pollock said. He looked to Khan. “What news on the blood found at the Elliots’ place?”

  “Well, sir, CSI can confirm it is definitely blood. But what they cannot tell without lab work is if it is human blood or not.”

  Pollock’s eyebrows shot up. “What else might they be doing—sacrificing goats in there?”

  “Actually, sir, you’d be amazed what gets done in these old farmhouse kitchens,” Hodgson put in, and Nick remembered hearing that her family were hill-farming people somewhere in the Scottish borders. “My gran used to butcher whole sheep in hers.”

  “All right, all right. Let’s get samples sent to the lab. See if we can get a match to Liddell, while we’re at it.”

  “They might not be able to, sir,” Hodgson warned. “Depends how degraded it is by time and the chemicals used to clean it up in the first place.”

  “Yes, I am aware of that fact, detective sergeant,” Pollock said. “They can but do their best, eh?” His eyes roved over the boards as if looking for something that might have been missed. “Mr Blenkinship may be able to give us a better idea of timescale on this. Has anybody seen him yet?”

  “Er, he arrived here while you and DC Weston were interviewing Mr Elliot,” Khan said. “He was looking for CSI McColl. I told him she was processing the Elliot scene, and I believe that is where he was heading.”

  Perhaps I should call Grace and give her a heads up… Nick checked his watch. He calculated how much time might have passed and decided it would probably be too late to do so.

  “Well, until the forensics come back on the farmhouse,” Pollock continued, “we’re just going to have to sit on Dylan for the time being and—”

  “I don’t think so, detective inspector,” said a sharp voice from the doorway.

  They all turned as Superintendent Waingrove strode in. She didn’t seem able to enter a room any other way. Nick instinctively straightened away from the desk he was leaning against, and Hodgson got to her feet.

  “Oh, ma’am?” Pollock queried. His voice was mild but Nick did not miss the way he tensed, like a mastiff in the presence of another big dog. “Why’s that, then?”

  Waingrove’s eyes narrowed. A muscle twitched at the side of her jaw.

  “When were you going to tell me about the planted evidence in the Elliot case?” she demanded, clearly annoyed enough by Pollock’s stance not to do this in private.

  “You mean the allegation of planted evidence, ma’am? The CSI in question
has been suspended, pending further investigations. No doubt there will be a report on your desk in due course.”

  “Not good enough,” Waingrove snapped. “I’ve just had my arse handed to me by Dylan Elliot’s solicitor. She’s accusing us of some kind of witch-hunt involving her client. First we bring him in for his son’s death—”

  “Er, actually, ma’am,” Hodgson interjected, “It appears that Jordan was not Dylan’s son.”

  Waingrove pinned her with a look so toxic Nick could almost see it melting Hodgson’s chances of ever making detective inspector.

  “As I was saying,” Waingrove continued, not shifting her gaze from the squirming Hodgson, “first we bring him in for Jordan Elliot’s death, and then we bring him in again for Owen Liddell. Don’t you have any other suspects?”

  “Oh aye,” Pollock said. “But none who had the means, the motive and the opportunity, and who’ve admitted assaulting the dead man on their property, where a large quantity of cleaned-up blood has just been found.” He paused deliberately. “Ma’am.”

  Nick wondered idly if the filing cabinet to his left would be enough to shield him from the blast radius, if Waingrove actually exploded, as she looked liable to do at any moment.

  He saw her take a breath and will herself calm. “Can you confirm it’s Liddell’s blood?”

  “Not at present, ma’am. That’s why we need to sit on Dylan for a day or so—just until we get the lab results back.”

  “The only way to do that would be to fast-track them,” Waingrove said. “Do you have any idea how much of the budget you’re blowing on having all these tests rushed through the lab?”

  It was clearly a rhetorical question and, wisely, nobody tried to answer it.

  After a moment, Waingrove nodded, as if silence signified capitulation. “Let him loose,” she said. And when Pollock would have argued she held up a hand, palm outward. “You can always pick him up again, if the evidence comes back with a solid link.”