by Amy Myers
‘Seriously, Georgia, I think we should look into Lance Venyon’s death further, including the lovelies of yesteryear. Let’s do the job thoroughly. Gwen said Venetia Wain’s daughter still lives in Wymdown. Why not book an overnight stay at Badon House to check into it and perhaps talk to Venyon’s daughter again?’
‘And if that leads nowhere, we can write Lance Venyon and King Arthur’s cup off?’ One of them had to take a firm stance or they’d be wandering around Camelot for ever.
Peter hesitated. ‘Probably.’ He gave her a beaming smile.
*
Badon House gave not the slightest sniff of buried secrets when she arrived there two days later. Nor did Wymdown. Maureen Jones, Venetia Wain’s daughter, was out and so was Elaine Holt, so Georgia had spent the afternoon gazing at Lance and Mary Venyon’s former home in the hope it might tell her something about its former occupants. Its Georgian windows and neatly trimmed lawn and borders blandly stared back at her, however, telling her nothing at all. Nor had the foundations of Badon House, which she had explored on her return. All the cellar now contained was Terry’s wine and a large number of pipes and spiders.
Just as she was prepared to write the visit off on work grounds and enjoy chatting to Gwen, Terry came home with good news. ‘You might catch Maureen in the church about seven-thirty,’ Terry told her. ‘I bumped into her this afternoon and she mentioned that she does the flowers on Friday evenings.’
‘Can I ask her about her mother’s former lovers?’
Gwen laughed. ‘Peter would do just that. Go carefully would be my vote, knowing Maureen. By way of introduction, there’s an old fresco on the north wall you can enthuse about.’ Gwen elected to delay supper until her return, and so after a drink and nibbles, Georgia set off down the footpath to Wymdown church. The sun had almost vanished for the day, and the minute she entered the churchyard it felt chilly. She could see no lights in the church and was uneasily conscious of her solitariness. ‘And no birds sing.’ This churchyard reminded her of the Keats poem. Here, time seemed temporarily suspended in a still heaviness, and she hurried through it to the church entrance, only to find it locked. The bird she was after had already flown, and frustrated she turned to go back to Badon House. She was beginning to understand why Jago was so keen on his theory. It was spooky enough here to imagine King Arthur tossing and turning beneath every gravestone.
Gwen had told her that the field Jago must own was not the one through which the footpath ran, but the one that stretched from the end of Badon House’s garden down to the churchyard’s side. It lay on Georgia’s right at present, and looked too rocky and too much at an incline to be ploughed. That must be good from the archaeological viewpoint. She caught herself, impatiently aware that she was beginning to take Jago’s theory as valid, even though he had given up on this field. She decided she would get back to Badon House as quickly as she could.
Nevertheless she lingered in the churchyard, not quite sure why she did so. It was easy to imagine that there was a bear in every bush. She could see plenty of such bushes on the far side where several large gravestones were clustered. A paper bag was sticking out from behind the one on the left. Perhaps this was where the local drug deals were done, debts paid, goods handed over. It was a remote enough place for it.
Automatically she began to walk over to pick up the rubbish, feeling increasingly ill at ease. This churchyard, or at least this corner of it, was distinctly creepy, far in excess of that generated by its prime purpose. It hadn’t seemed creepy to her the other day, but perhaps this only proved how subjective one’s feelings could be—
Something seemed to catch her by the throat. That wasn’t a paper bag. It was a hand. A still hand.
She found herself running towards it, as if to dismiss all thoughts of what it might be by disproving them as quickly as possible. She must be mistaken. The splashes on it were mud, the hand—
—was a hand. It belonged to a body that didn’t move. Couldn’t move. The sightless eyes of the dead man stared upwards, his clothes soaked with dried blood. She forced herself to touch the wrist to be sure of what was obvious. It felt cold, and the block of ice inside her that had momentarily stopped all thoughts unfroze. She gagged as the bile rose in her throat and with trembling hands delved into her bag for her mobile phone.
Chapter Three
A crime scene. She was standing in a crime scene. Georgia tried fiercely to concentrate on depersonalizing what was on the ground before her as she shivered in the dim light. In the distance the evening sun still shone, but in this tree-shrouded place it had long gone, leaving nothing but her and a dead body. It was that of a young man, with a shock of dark hair, and he had been shot. That was all too clear from the blood on his anorak, obviously from the entry wound in his chest, and judging by its appearance death had occurred not long ago. There was no gun to be seen.
While they had been sipping their drinks inside Badon House, Terry had gone outside to fetch something and had returned with a comment that the only thing that disturbed their peace at Badon House was the occasional pot-shot at a rabbit or fox. Had he recently heard a shot, perhaps this one? Out here, with woods and open fields around, it was unlikely that anyone would hear or care. The night has a thousand eyes: she remembered the poem she’d learned at primary school, but here they would all be closed. There would be a thousand ways for a murderer to escape.
No birds were singing. This was May, the time for their spring song, yet there was no sound at all, save her breathing in the heavy silence of evening. The fresh damp smell of dew contrasted strongly with the ugliness and tragedy of the corpse so near to her. She tried to force herself to concentrate on the crime scene, to notice details to help the police, but all she could do was stare blindly around her, her thoughts a jumble. This corner of the graveyard was more than eerie; it had a darkness and a sinister quality as though even the sun was scared to enter it. Nonsense, she told herself. Pure gothic fantasy. She knew she was wrong, however. Long after this crime had been solved, the place would still smell like this.
At last she heard the welcome sound of the siren growing nearer. Along the lane to the church only rabbits and foxes would have to clear the way, yet its shrillness had never seemed so welcome. With police arrival she would have company, and after giving her statement she could leave. Eventually, that is. She knew it would take time.
Georgia’s fingers curled over her mobile. She could ring Luke, but what for? A cry for support? Surely she should be able to cope on her own. She’d ring him after the ordeal was over.
Then, thankfully, she saw lights, as the police car drew up.
‘Here,’ she called, as doors slammed and flashlights pin-pricked their way through the churchyard. She resisted her impulse to run towards them in the interests of not wanting to add unnecessary footprints to the scene. She had longed to call DCI Mike Gilroy, Peter’s former sergeant in his police career. With luck this might just be within his area, but she had reluctantly decided not to. This death was nothing to do with Marsh & Daughter, and she should go through the right channels.
‘Miss Marsh?’ the elder of the two DCs asked.
Once upon a time, a fatherly Dixon of Dock Green might have patted her on the shoulder murmuring, ‘There, there. You leave all this to me.’ No longer. The steely eyes of this young policeman spoke of efficiency and impersonality. There were merits in both approaches, and Georgia braced herself to appreciate the only one she was offered.
‘Yes,’ she replied.
‘DC Stewart, and –’ he indicated his female colleague – ‘DC Jenkins.’ The girl nodded, already on her radio summoning the team.
It would begin now. The machine was set in motion. Georgia felt her racing heart slowly calming down, now that the action was out of her hands. She retreated, while they conferred. She’d heard it all before, even seen some of it from a distance when Peter was a DI himself, and since then during Marsh & Daughter investigations. She had been an outsider then, however. Now
she was a part of the investigation. She had found the body and as first on the scene would be automatically suspect until proven innocent. There would be a hunt for the gun when the SOCOs got here; they might think she had removed it. She thought of this with some surprise, uneasy at the thought, as though it linked her to the body, giving her responsibility towards it.
‘Are you all right?’ DC Jenkins asked, coming over to her. As a Dixon, she wasn’t doing badly after all.
‘I think so.’
She wasn’t. With tension relaxing, Georgia could feel herself swaying, and the DC led her to a dilapidated bench where she could put her head between her knees. It helped a little, especially when the DC volunteered to get some water from the car. Luke, I really should call Luke, she thought dully. And Gwen. Yet by doing so she would seem to be admitting her own weakness. She was supposed to be a professional crime investigator, not to faint at the sight of blood and death. It was more than that causing this, however. It was the atmosphere here, over and above the effects of the time of day and the gloom of the bushes. In this corner of the churchyard there was evil; perhaps from the murder that had just taken place, but perhaps for longer. Unbidden, Jago Priest’s story of the chaplains’ burial of their treasure came back to her. She could imagine this churchyard, probably much smaller then if it existed at all, and the chaplains passing through it, silent, dark figures in the night, fleeing from their enemies. The field where Jago – and Lance Venyon – had so fondly believed the remains of Sir Gawain to be buried was only thirty yards away.
There was no darkness any longer. The team was arriving and the first floodlight immediately illuminated the scene, white-suited figures were taking control, stepping plates laid ready to avoid disturbing footprints, tent erected, video cameras, and tape. Georgia was far enough away for the inner-cordon tape to exclude her, so she remained where she was, an isolated observer. And then came salvation.
‘What on earth are you doing here, Georgia?’ Mike Gilroy asked kindly, sitting down at her side. ‘This got anything to do with you and Peter, has it?’
‘Is this your case?’ she asked him stupidly. She didn’t need the answer, she was just overwhelmingly grateful for his presence.
‘Yes. I heard your name, so I decided to poke my nose in. Unless of course . . .’
He didn’t need to continue. She understood. ‘Unless I’m involved in it. And the answer’s no. I just found him.’ The use of ‘him’ was important. It would be so easy to think of the body as ‘it’, an impersonal object now that life had been taken away.
‘Alone in the churchyard in the evening? Walking a dog, were you, Georgia?’ Mike prompted her.
She supposed it must sound strange. ‘Peter’s sister Gwen lives up there—’ She waved in the direction of Badon House. ‘I’m staying with them overnight. Not a case, or not one yet, to be more precise. They sent me here to meet someone who was doing the church flowers. No sign of her when I arrived.’
‘Which was when?’
Of course. He needed every detail. This wasn’t just a chat between her and Mike. She was a witness like any other.
‘I came down the footpath from Badon House and got here at about seven-thirty. The church was already locked up, and in darkness. I was going away again when I saw something poking out behind the gravestone. I thought it was litter, so I came to pick it up.’
That sounded not only weak, but imbecilic. But how could logic explain all the hundred and one things she and anyone else might do without any apparent reason or judgement – and usually without finding a dead body at the end of the mission?
‘Did you touch him? Touch anything else? Gun?’
‘No gun. I touched his hand, and then tried for a pulse. I’ve never been too good at that. I couldn’t find one.’ How stupid. Of course she couldn’t. He was dead.
Mike nodded as though she’d said the most natural thing in the world. ‘We’ll take fingerprints, and DNA and firearm-residue swabs from you. That should clear you.’
‘I hope so,’ she managed to joke, although it didn’t emerge like one.
‘Who was it you expected to find in the church?’
The crime tent was up now, and figures were moving purposefully in and out. The outer-cordon tape was being strung round, and white-clad figures would begin to crawl over the ground like giant slugs, devouring every possible clue in their allotted path.
‘I’ll be back,’ Mike said, as he was summoned away by the pathologist. ‘Don’t move.’
No problem. She couldn’t, much as she wanted to be away from this place. It was ten minutes before Mike returned.
‘Do you know who he was?’ she asked.
‘No. Do you know Wymdown, Georgia? He’s probably local. No sign of car keys or credit cards.’
She shook her head. ‘I’ve only been here once. To a wedding two weeks ago. Peter’s sister Gwen.’
‘Did you see anything at all as you walked through on the way to the church? Did you have any sense that you weren’t alone? Did you hear anything?’
‘Nothing. Certainly not a shot. Not even a bird.’
‘Nothing was changed on this scene while you were checking the body? You’re sure you touched nothing else?’
‘Yes. I knelt down on the ground, then retreated to make the call. I wanted to see a woman called Maureen Jones in the church to ask her about her mother, Venetia Wain. She was a long-distance sailor—’
‘Taking it up, are you?’
‘No again.’ Georgia managed a smile, conscious he was trying to help her. ‘Peter wanted to check something out.’
Mike groaned. ‘This case that isn’t one yet. Have you two been stirring up enough trouble for it to have any conceivable connection with this?’
‘No stirrings at all,’ she replied firmly. ‘It’s only an idea which will probably come to nothing, and even Peter acknowledges that. And it has nothing to do with this death.’
‘You’re sure you’ve never seen this poor chap before?’ Mike indicated the corpse, now thankfully shrouded from her view.
‘Yes. He’s a stranger to me.’
‘I’ve seen him,’ volunteered a SOCO, who had arrived with some slip shoes for Georgia while they took prints of her shoes. ‘In a pub.’
‘Helpful,’ commented Mike mildly.
‘This pub,’ was the hasty reply. ‘Wymdown. He was a barman in the Green Man.’
‘Name?’
‘Pass, sir. Sandy, I think I heard someone call him.’
‘Georgia!’ She could hear Terry’s shout in the distance, and realized he was being barred from entry into the crime scene.
She looked at Mike, who nodded. ‘You can go. You will stay overnight, though? We’ll need a statement tomorrow.’ Arrangements made, she made her way back to the churchyard gate, gave her name to the PC on guard for his clipboard, and fell into Gwen’s arms. She’d always been such a comforting aunt, especially during Georgia’s childhood tantrums, and a quarter of a century later she still was.
‘You gave us a fright, Georgia,’ Terry said anxiously. ‘All those police sirens. We thought it was you.’
She was appalled. That hadn’t even occurred to her, and she was immediately remorseful. ‘Only a witness. The police want me to make a statement tomorrow, Gwen, so I’ll be hanging around for a while.’
‘Stay tomorrow night too,’ Gwen said immediately. ‘Terry’s rung Luke.’
More trouble, Georgia thought. She should have rung him, but she didn’t care now. All she wanted was to be away from here and back in the haven of Badon House. And then she remembered Terry’s reference to pot-shots, and had to force herself to ask him about them.
He looked surprised. ‘It could have been in this direction – let me think. It was while I was fetching the torch from the car. Sevenish, maybe.’
‘We should tell them.’ Georgia’s heart sank. She saw Gwen’s glance at Terry.
‘Not we. Me,’ he said firmly. ‘You and Gwen get back to the house.’
&n
bsp; Luke arrived almost as soon as they reached it. ‘There was no need—’ she began, as she opened the door to him.
She saw a mixture of emotions cross his face from anger to relief, as he came in. ‘I would say there was every need.’ He gave her a long hug, then said grimly, ‘Never, never, leave me out again.’
‘I won’t,’ she promised. Why had she, she wondered. It had seemed important at the time, but now only stupid and selfish, and she was overwhelmingly glad to see him. Mike would have rung his wife to say he was on a case. Why on earth hadn’t she rung Luke?
She couldn’t wrestle with this now. She was too tired, and now hungry, she realized. It was well past nine o’clock, and Gwen’s dinner was busy spoiling in the oven. It tasted good nevertheless, after first Terry and then the food itself arrived. No one mentioned the body, and it was some time before she realized they must be longing to know its identity. She would, in their shoes, and so she told them.
‘But we knew him,’ Gwen exclaimed in dismay. ‘You know, Terry, that young exotic-looking young man who didn’t understand what bitter was when he first came. You had to explain beers to him.’
‘Yes. Wouldn’t trust him further than I can—’
‘Terry!’ Gwen said warningly, and he laughed.
‘Throw a dart,’ he finished. ‘But I’m sorry he’s dead. Drugs? Gang fight?’
‘In Wymdown?’ Georgia asked incredulously. Surely this village was picture-postcard territory. ‘Do you have gangs here?’
‘Sure. Nowhere’s immune now. Still, the churchyard seems a bit out of the way; it’s normally a punch-up behind the pub. My money’s on drugs. Perfect place. Sure you didn’t hear a car, Georgia?’
‘No.’ That wasn’t so surprising, since if the shot Terry had heard had been from the churchyard the murderer, if in a car or on foot, would have left well before her arrival. But where was Maureen Jones? She could only recently have left – unless she failed to turn up, of course. And, it occurred to her, the fact that it was a regular job for her rather put the kybosh on its being a drugs rendezvous. Poor timing, if it had been.