Silent Crimes

by MICHAEL HAMBLING

Caitlin frowned. ‘You see, what we do, cleaning commercial premises, is ideal for people just out of prison. That’s why we have this agreement with the remand service and take on a handful every year. I tend to use them in places where they won’t come across anything valuable, but I can’t guarantee that’s always the case. In the end I rely on their honesty and their wish to stay on the straight and narrow.’

  ‘Have you any cause for concern with regard to Mr Baker?’ Rae asked.

  ‘Well, not really. He’s a reasonable worker and none of the people at the premises he cleans have made any complaints.’ Caitlin was still frowning.

  ‘But?’

  Caitlin pursed her lips. ‘It’s just something about him. I sometimes wonder if there’s a different man lurking underneath the cooperative and polite Trent Baker I see. He was in just half an hour ago to collect a few documents and sign off for the week’s work. I know I shouldn’t really judge him. I mean, ten years in prison would make anyone behave differently, wouldn’t it? The thing is, if there’s ever the slightest hint of trouble from anyone, I have them out in a flash. With Trent there’s just something a bit off about his attitude but I can’t put my finger on what it is.’

  ‘Can you give me a list of the places he’s been cleaning?’

  Caitlin looked uneasy. ‘Look, the cleaning contract business is cut-throat. I can’t afford to lose any customers. If some of them got wind that ex-cons out on remand have been cleaning their premises, they’d hit the roof.’

  ‘I wouldn’t be that insensitive, Caitlin. I just want to look around, see where they are. Will he be at the same places next week?’

  Caitlin nodded, still looking uncertain. ‘Yes, he will.’ She scribbled some company names and addresses on a sheet of paper and pushed it across the desk. ‘I’m trusting you not to get us into hot water here.’

  Rae picked up the paper and glanced at the list. ‘Do the cleaners have any say in what premises they work in? Or are they just allocated by you?’

  ‘I allocate them, but I try to take into account the distance from their homes.’

  ‘It’s just that this one here is in Bath. Trent lives in Bristol. Why’s he been given that job?’

  ‘He did ask for that one,’ Caitlin said. ‘Apparently it’s round the corner from his aunt’s, so he can get breakfast when he’s finished.’

  ‘Right. Maybe that’s the one we’ll need to keep an eye on. Listen, I’d appreciate it if you didn’t let him know I’ve been here. Don’t do anything or say anything unusual to him. Not yet. I’ll keep you in the picture if I find anything suspicious. That’s a promise.’ Rae stood up to leave.

  She was aware of Caitlin watching her as she made her way out. She still looked unhappy. Maybe she should ask the boss to phone and reassure her. She walked down the road towards the car park and looked at her watch. Maybe there would be time for another visit to the tumbledown farm later this evening before it got too dark.

  ‘Where to now?’ Craig asked as she climbed into the car.

  ‘Barry’s arranged for me to visit a retired bobby who used to work at Bishops Lydeard nick before it closed. I’m hoping she was around at the time of the commune. It shouldn’t take long. If you drop me off, you can go for a coffee or something. Then I think we should head back to the hotel to get something to eat before the bar gets too busy. Oh, and I may need to talk to that bookshop owner again. I think he might remember more than he told us, but I just didn’t ask the right questions. If we step on it, we should get there before he locks up for the day.’

  *

  Rae knocked at the door of a small terraced house in Bishops Lydeard. The woman who answered looked to be in her late fifties. Her greying hair was pinned up, she was wearing slacks and a baggy shirt several sizes too big for her, and she had a smile like a Cheshire cat.

  ‘I’ve been expecting you,’ she said, holding out her hand. ‘Sue Penny, police constable, recently retired. And you must be Rae Gregson.’

  Rae shook her hand. ‘That’s right. I’m really grateful you found time to see me. I could do with a bit of local insight from someone who was in the force and I’d like to pick your brains.’

  She followed Sue Penny into a small sitting room that looked out onto a tiny garden packed full of flowers in early summer bloom. Sue poured tea from a china pot into two flowery mugs and handed one to Rae.

  ‘Your boss told me why you wanted to see me but I’m not sure how much I’ll be able to help. The people up at that commune kept themselves very much to themselves. We didn’t see a lot of them down here in the village and they rarely caused any trouble, so I didn’t have much to do with them. I did call in once or twice just to show my face, but I didn’t see anything to arouse concern. There weren’t any obvious signs of serious drug abuse, the place seemed reasonably well run and the children looked clean, happy and cared-for.’

  ‘I heard that they may have struggled to grow enough food. Is that right? That would be a problem if they wanted to be self-sufficient.’

  ‘Well, there’s truth in what you say. It was never one of the most productive farms in the area. I don’t know exactly why. I think the soil was a bit poor and the drainage was wrong. But it wasn’t a huge problem. They made things to sell at the local markets, you know, arts and crafts, jewellery, knitted clothes and the like. Someone even ran a poetry workshop up there for a while, had classes one afternoon a week. They made some extra cash that way.’

  Rae took a sip of her tea. ‘I’m trying to find out whether there was any coercion — if people were ever kept there against their will. Also, whether there was any violence towards the end.’

  Sue shook her head. ‘I was never aware of anything like that. But then they were stuck up in that valley by themselves, so I suppose we wouldn’t ever have known if there was. We had reports of some heated arguments just before they finally left, but when I went round to check, it all seemed okay. I went up because of something someone overheard in the local pub, a punter claiming that a young woman had gone missing. I think the name Katie was mentioned. When I arrived, the atmosphere was a bit tense, but the people recorded as living there all seemed to be present. A very vivacious woman called Catherine confirmed her identity to me — Catherine Templeton, it was. She stuck in my mind because of her dark, Mediterranean looks, just like a gypsy. A few weeks after that, they all left. One day they were there, the next they were gone. The place has been empty ever since. It’s almost derelict now.’

  Rae took out the photo of the couple from the package Jade Allen had retrieved from the crime scene.

  ‘Could this be her?’

  Sue looked, shook her head. ‘Absolutely not. Wrong colouring, wrong face shape, wrong hair, wrong everything. The woman I met had a really upfront personality. That one in the photo looks a bit mousey.’

  ‘You can’t recall any other names, I suppose?’ Rae asked.

  ‘You’re asking a lot, aren’t you? We’re talking about twelve years ago here. No, it’s just the name Katie that I recall, and the leader, a man called Tim. He had a bit of a messiah complex if you ask me.’

  ‘There wasn’t anyone called Trent — Trent Baker — as far as you recall?’

  ‘I don’t remember the name. There was one man lurking in the background all the time I was there. I reckon he was keeping an eye on me. A short bloke with a face like a choirboy. But he’d vanished by the time I left so I didn’t get to speak to him.’

  Rae finished her tea, thanked Sue and rose to leave.

  ‘How are things for you, Rae? I see that you’re trans. How is the system treating you?’

  Rae sighed inwardly. Did she really want to answer yet more questions about her life from well-meaning people? Still, Sue’s interest seemed genuine, and she had tried to be helpful.

  ‘It’s been really good, at least since I’ve been in Dorset. I’m in the county’s top team, the violent crime unit, and it’s just fantastic. I could never have believed it a few years ago. And the boss wants me to sit my s
ergeant’s exam. Sometimes I have to pinch myself. It’s bloody hard work, though.’

  ‘That’s modern policing for you, isn’t it? There’s no room for passengers anymore. I miss it occasionally, though I wasn’t a detective like you. So this case you’re on is serious stuff?’ Sue said.

  Rae nodded. ‘There might be a link to that commune or there might not. But we have to follow the lead. Right now I’m meant to be tracing hostels for homeless men in the Taunton area. Do you know where I might make a start?’

  ‘There’s a personal crisis one in Southburn Street, run by a local charity. It takes people in on an emergency basis, with no questions asked for the first couple of days. It may be a good place to start.’

  Rae looked at her watch. ‘Thanks for that. I’d better be off. I want to make one more visit while there’s still time.’

  Sue’s description of a short man who looked like a choirboy fitted Trent Baker exactly, if the photo of him on the PNC was at all accurate. Very interesting. And hadn’t Barry mentioned the name Catherine Templeton as being somehow involved in the man’s criminal history?

  She made her way along the street and was pleased to see Craig just leaving the café where he’d been waiting. They’d need to move quickly if they were to visit the bookshop owner before he closed up for the day. They were in luck.

  George Biddulph stood at the door. ‘I wondered if you might be back at some point, but I didn’t think it would be this soon. You’re only just in time. I was about to lock up.’

  ‘Sorry,’ Rae said. ‘We left in a bit of a hurry earlier because I had to see someone else. But it occurred to me that you must have met the writer of the leaflet if he published it himself and gave the copies to you.’

  George nodded. ‘Yes, I did. I’ve been thinking about it since you left, trying to picture him. I can’t remember many details, but he seemed a bit driven, if you know what I mean. He seemed just the type you’d imagine to be running a group of that sort. Quiet but totally determined. Ruthless, maybe?’ He shrugged. ‘Maybe that’s reading too much into the few minutes we chatted.’

  ‘Was there anyone else from the group with him, or was he alone?’

  ‘No. Now you come to mention it, he had a woman with him. She’d written part of the pamphlet. Blonde, she was. I think her name was Katie. She might even be mentioned as one of the contributors.’

  Rae took out the leaflet and paged through it. Sure enough, someone called Katie Templar had written the chapters on craftwork and poetry. A vague suspicion began to form in her mind.

  ‘She was blonde, you say?’

  ‘Yes. Slightly built. She was very quiet and hardly spoke, probably a bit of a shy type.’ He paused. ‘It’s funny how things can pop back into your mind, even after so many years.’

  ‘She wasn’t dark and vivacious?’

  ‘No, absolutely not. The exact opposite.’

  Rae frowned. There was something odd here. Rumours that someone called Katie had gone missing. A witness who’d described Katie Templar as being slightly built, blonde and quiet. A police check which had been called off after a Catherine Templeton, dark and vivacious, was confirmed as being alive and well. Katie and Catherine. Similar names but different people? And the fact that there was history between Trent Baker and Catherine Templeton was important. It would all need checking once she was back in Wareham. She took her copy of the photo out of her bag and showed it to George.

  ‘Could this be her? The blonde woman who came into your shop?’

  ‘It was a long time ago, but it might be. If not, it was someone very like that. I remember thinking that she looked a bit like my daughter, and I thanked God she wasn’t in a commune. Some of them can be a bit, er, ropey, can’t they?’

  *

  It was mid-evening by the time Rae and Craig drove back up the narrow lane towards Heathfield Farm. This time Craig took the car much closer, steering it carefully between the potholes that scarred the surface of the lane. The farm buildings and surrounding fields were in deep shadow, the high ground to the west blocking out the evening sun. ‘I don’t want to go into the buildings again,’ Rae said. ‘I just want to wander about a bit and get a feel for the lie of the land.’

  The pair walked through the farmyard and followed a path up to a hillside field that sloped steeply towards the higher ground of the Quantocks. From the top they had a view across the coombe. The sight of the deeply shadowed valley and the half-rotted buildings and tumbledown fences gave Rae an uneasy feeling. Was there a malignancy still lurking here or was it her over-active imagination, stimulated by the fact that she hadn’t eaten since a hasty lunch seven hours ago? They stood looking down, and then made their way back towards the buildings. Rae took out her copy of one of the photos that Jade had found. It showed a couple sitting with their backs to a tree. Had it been taken around here somewhere? She looked around. There was a solitary tree at one end of the field below her. Could that be it? She took Craig’s arm and walked back down the slope towards the farm buildings and the tree. Yes, it looked similar, but larger.

  ‘What do you think, Craig? Is it this one?’

  ‘A sycamore. I’d say it was the one in the photo. You can see the start of the woodland beyond the top of the field.’

  Rae tugged at Craig’s arm and led him off the path and round towards the derelict pigsties. If there was a body buried here, where would it be? This could be the place, down under several feet of earth and muck. She shivered.

  ‘Let’s go back,’ she said. ‘I’ve seen enough. And I’m starving.’

  She resisted the temptation to look back. There was something about the place that gave her the shudders.

  ‘Did you know that a few miles away, up on the top of the hills, there’s a place called Dead Woman’s Ditch?’ Craig said. ‘I was looking at the walking map and spotted it. One of the stories about it says it marks the place where a woman was murdered by her husband a couple of hundred years ago. The story’s a bit morbid.’

  ‘Thanks very much, Craig. I don’t think I wanted to know that.’

  Chapter 15: Catherine’s Story

  Saturday Morning

  Early on Saturday morning Sophie and Barry met in the incident room to discuss Rae’s findings from the Quantocks. She’d phoned Sophie the evening before and Sophie had told her to stay put on Saturday, as search teams were organised for that afternoon. Meanwhile, Sophie and Barry agreed to make a start on tracing and interviewing the people who had cropped up in Rae’s enquiries, particularly Catherine Templeton and Katie Templar. Were they one and the same person, or had the local police become confused by the similarity of their names and merely assumed that they were? It would have been an easy mistake to make, particularly if all evidence of Katie Templar’s existence had been deliberately covered up by the group leaders.

  ‘It’s possible that this Catherine Templeton might be in some danger, so we need to see her today,’ Sophie said. ‘As for Trent Baker, well, it’s about time we took a look at him. Agreed? We can’t let Rae do all the leg work.’

  ‘Absolutely,’ Barry said. ‘I’ve been stuck in here far too long, staring at that screen. I think I might be going mad.’

  Sophie looked at her number two in surprise. ‘Should I be worried, Barry? It’s not like you to make that kind of remark. I’ll message a few contacts in the Bath and Bristol area, then we’ll get going. Do you want to drive? It might help to get rid of some of that pent-up frustration.’

  *

  They drove to Bath and found Catherine’s home address easily, drawing up outside her end-terrace house in the middle of the morning. Barry rang the doorbell and stood back, admiring the door’s glossy red paint. The woman who answered his knock was tall, dark-haired, rather gypsy-like and she looked wary. Barry introduced the two of them and asked if they could come inside for a moment.

  ‘You are the Catherine Templeton who lived in a commune near the Quantock Hills about twelve years ago?’ he asked.

  ‘God, that’s
going back a bit. But yes, I was. Why do you want to know?’ she said.

  ‘We’re investigating a probable murder in Dorset that might be linked to it somehow, but we’re not sure what the link might be.’

  ‘A murder? In Dorset? Christ.’ Catherine looked shocked. ‘You’d better come in. I think I need to sit down. Who was the victim?’

  They followed her into a sitting room furnished like a Spanish villa, the walls painted terracotta. The décor matched the owner.

  ‘Did you come across a Paul Prentice in the commune when you were there?’ Barry asked.

  Catherine shook her head. ‘No. I heard the name, though. He was one of the people that set it up, but he fell out with the others and left. That’s all I know about him. How did you find out that I was there?’

  Barry decided to keep the explanation simple at this stage. ‘One of my colleagues has been in that part of Somerset for a couple of days and I think your name cropped up when she was talking to some of the locals. Could you give us a rundown of the place and the leading figures involved? It will help us decide whether it’ll be worth following up.’

  Catherine gestured to a settee and took a chair facing them.

  ‘I may not be the best person to ask about the place. I was only there for a month or so before it fell apart and everyone left. As soon as I arrived, I could tell something wasn’t right. There were tense faces all the time and loads of arguments. It wasn’t what I expected. But some of the others said it had only recently got like that. They said it had been brilliant at first with everyone so happy. It was run on Buddhist principles, and everyone was supposed to muck in and do their bit. That’s why I joined them. But by the time I got there, things had gone wrong. I thought the leader, a man called Tim Brotherton, seemed a bit of an autocrat, but some of the other women said that hadn’t always been the case. I think he had a messiah streak, if you know what I mean. Anyway, I arrived at a time when a lot of the crops had failed, and the group was struggling to keep everyone fed and clothed. There had clearly been some kind of dispute, because I found out that a couple of the original members had left, your Paul Prentice among them.’