An Unfinished Murder

by An Unfinished Murder (retail) (epub)

Markby nodded and added, ‘Well, this may just be my fancy, but it’s as if someone took trouble over her burial and wanted to do it right. Josh said they’d done a good job.’

  ‘They didn’t want anyone to see a fresh grave.’

  ‘True, but I’m wondering if they weren’t also showing the dead girl a kind of respect.’

  ‘Another tricky thing, fixing time of death,’ said Barker gloomily. Brushing his hair that morning, he’d found the hairbrush clogged with loose hairs. ‘It can mislead you, the state of rigor. All sorts of conditions influence the speed it comes on at, or how quickly it wears off.’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ agreed Markby, impatiently, ‘I know. When was the victim last seen alive, and when was the body found? Death occurred between the two. That’s the general rule, and the only one you can be sure of. But let’s postulate that she died early in the day and was taken, by some means, to the spinney during the day. Dilys is convinced there was a man in the spinney – she told me he reeked of cigarettes. Let’s assume he intended to bury the body while it was still light enough to see what he was doing.’

  ‘But those perishing kids turned up,’ said Barker gloomily.

  ‘Yes, the children disturbed him and the would-be gravedigger hadn’t time. If he’d waited until he was sure enough of himself to go back that evening, it would have been very dark and he couldn’t have moved, except with great difficulty, among the trees and bushes. Carter and I were there last night with torches and nearly came to grief. The gravedigger couldn’t use artificial light, because it might be noticed from the houses in Brocket’s Row. So, hearing the children coming, he scraped some leaf litter over the body and decided to return the next morning . . .’ Markby paused. ‘It rained the next day, according to Josh, so that Josh himself didn’t go back to the spinney. If he had, he might have stumbled on the act of burial – and who knows what would have happened? As it was, whoever buried her in the pouring rain must have had the dickens of a job.’

  Barker leaned back in his chair and tapped his fingers together. ‘OK, then, I’ll go along with your theory. She lay in the spinney overnight. But we still don’t know who left her there. Or who returned to bury her. I imagine, whoever it was, he didn’t mind the rain. It kept others away.’

  ‘Fred Stokes was a lorry driver and lived in Brocket’s Row,’ said Markby.

  ‘Well, I was going to see him today, anyway,’ said Barker. He stood up and held out his hand. ‘Thanks for your help. You can leave it with me now.’

  ‘Willingly!’ Markby assured him. But it wasn’t true.

  PART TWO

  Chapter 10

  Nick Ellsworth pulled into the parking area of the fast-food diner. It was situated alongside a filling station forecourt, and was approximately halfway between his home, in Weston St Ambrose, and the offices of the firm of architects in Cheltenham, in which he was a partner. He took pride in being an ‘early bird’. It kept the office staff on their toes, so he liked to think, and made a good impression all round. In any case, he enjoyed driving his two-seater sports model through the countryside, still damp with morning dew. It was like setting out on an adventure.

  His house was called the Old Forge because once, long ago, it been the village blacksmith’s cottage. The forge had been alongside it, spitting red sparks and echoing to the clang of hammer on metal. In its present incarnation it was the sort of property estate agents love to have on their books. Previous owners had converted the whole thing, forge and cottage, into a rambling but spacious family home. He and Cassie, as newly-weds, had begged and borrowed from family to raise the deposit. He’d be paying off the mortgage for years. But they had no regrets. Admittedly, it was a bit isolated for convenience, but wild horses wouldn’t drag Cassie out of it.

  The early drive meant he missed the worst of the traffic. It meant he also missed the family breakfast, and there was a definite benefit in that. He had three children under school age. The two older ones, twin boys, squabbled; their disputes were marked by flying lumps of banana, squashed egg soldiers and spilled liquids.

  Their sister, Libby, was only six months old. Gordana, the nanny, seemed indifferent to the running war between his sons. ‘They are little men,’ she would say, if their squabbles threatened to turn into brawls. She concentrated on the baby, whom she force-fed like one of those unhappy geese. In Nick’s opinion his daughter was becoming visibly doughnut-shaped.

  He had mentioned this to Cassie but it had not been well received. (‘Don’t criticise Gordana or she’ll leave!’) Gordana frequently dropped hints about leaving, anyway. She didn’t like living in such a quiet spot with nowhere to go in her free time. She came from a village somewhere in the Balkans and she hadn’t left that, she complained, just to find herself stuck out in the country in England. She stayed because they paid her over the going rate.

  Cassie herself sat gloomily drinking coffee and complaining of headaches. This coming autumn the boys would start school; someone would have to ferry them to and fro, because Weston St Ambrose had long ago lost its primary school. The plan was that Cassie and Gordana (if she was still around) would share the school run, until Cassie returned to work full time. She was a web designer.

  ‘So, she’s got to stay, Nick!’ Cassie insisted. ‘To get someone else who will be responsible for three children won’t be easy, especially stuck out here at Weston St Ambrose. Gordana grumbles but she’ll stay, I’m pretty sure, if we don’t upset her. She doesn’t mind the boys being boisterous, and she loves Libby.’

  Moreover, Gordana was a competent driver who grasped the wheel with grim determination and stared through the windscreen with unwavering intensity. In her time off, she drove Cassie’s ageing Mini; at other times she took charge of the larger family vehicle, with room for the children. Cassie had asked her where she’d learned to drive and she had replied casually that the army taught her.

  ‘No wonder,’ Nick had muttered, when Cassie relayed this piece of news to him, ‘that she handles the car as though it’s a truck!’ To which he’d added, ‘What was she doing in the army?’

  Cassie had replied, crossly, how should she know? ‘I didn’t like to ask,’ she’d added.

  Nick had given up worrying about anything at home. He had barred anyone but himself from driving his two-seater. That rule fixed, it was easier to let Cassie and the ‘General’, as he now referred to Gordana – out of her hearing – sort things out between them. Cassie said he shouldn’t call the nanny by any nickname, because one day she’d overhear. Nick was already of the opinion that Gordana spoke, or at least understood, far more English than she let on. What’s more, she listened in to any conversation, including telephone calls, and it wasn’t simply to improve her English. She just liked to know everything. Cassie informed him he was being paranoid.

  No wonder, then, he’d given up on breakfast en famille and chose, instead, to drop into the diner for his latte and the fry-up. That was another thing about breakfast at home. No one was prepared to cook him bacon and eggs. Cassie declared fried breakfast to be death on a plate. She didn’t eat breakfast, anyway, other than a slice of brown toast and a small tub of organic yoghurt. Gordana, curiously, ate pungent salami and a lot of very heavy bread sprinkled with salt. All in all, it was easier just to get out of the way. He hadn’t let Cassie know about the all-day breakfast, of course.

  Another reason for stopping at the diner was that a rack on the wall held a selection of daily newspapers. He seldom bought a newspaper but he liked the traditional feel of sitting there, reading one, as he breakfasted. It was what his own father had done, so he looked on it as carrying on a tradition. This morning, even earlier commuters than himself had snaffled both The Times and the Telegraph, and he had to make do with a tabloid. He took it, together with his coffee and a stick with a numbered plastic flag on it, to a table by the window and, while waiting for his fry-up to appear, opened up the paper.

  The café suddenly seemed to have gone quiet. Or he’d gone deaf. All around him people
were eating and apparently talking – he could see their mouths moving – but he couldn’t hear a word they said, or the chink of cutlery on plates, or the hiss of the machine that produced the coffee. It was like being in a silent movie. This curious silence began the moment his eyes focused on the page facing him, and the image of Rebecca Hellington.

  Shock was followed by disbelief and then horror. His first conscious reaction, once he’d managed to get any control of his thoughts and emotions, was that it was a mistake. It wasn’t, couldn’t be, that wretched girl. This was a pretty standard portrait photo of some other long-haired eighteen-year-old who looked a bit like her. Come on! he told himself. You can’t really remember what she did look like. It was twenty years ago. But a scan of the article under the photo confirmed the identity. Someone had found her body. Strictly speaking, they’d unearthed her bones. Somehow, a skeleton was more shocking than an entire body. Digging up someone’s bones, it hardly seemed decent.

  The diner burst out of its silent world with a hubbub of noise that made his head reel. He battled to get a grip. How could anyone just ‘find’ a body – or what remained of it – after twenty years? No one had found her when the entire police force of the county was out looking for her. Rebecca had vanished off the face of the earth for good.

  He scanned the accompanying article and learned very little. The police spoke vaguely of ‘information received’ that had led to the discovery. But it was the ‘where’ rather than the ‘how’ that really threw Nick into complete confusion. ‘In woodland on the outskirts of Bamford,’ the article told him.

  He was crumpling the paper in his hands. He knew it and yet couldn’t stop himself. The world had begun to spin again. This diner was as chaotic as a hall of mirrors at a funfair. How on earth had the body ended up in some woodland miles away? When he could focus again, he saw the article had been written under the byline of Tania Morris. Ms Morris didn’t enlighten her readers beyond reciting the basic facts. That suggested to Nick that she didn’t know much else. So she padded it out. She wrote enthusiastically of some plod called Markby. This officer was now long retired but had handled the original investigation at the Bamford end of things, Bamford being the girl’s hometown, which she’d been intending to visit when she disappeared. Markby, though now retired, was assisting the new enquiry, said Ms Morris. There was a very small, very smudgy photo of a tall, thin, older guy in a gilet and pullover, rather distinguished-looking. He was standing in some scrubby woodland and staring down at the ground like a country gent coming upon signs of poachers on his land.

  The noise was switched off again, as if someone had twiddled the knobs on an old-fashioned radio. The silent movie was running again. Nick sat at the table as if isolated in a thick fog. Twenty years, and everyone had forgotten the fuss and bother surrounding the girl’s disappearance. This would knock Pete completely for six. The police had put him through the mill at the time. Pete had described a sergeant, a real eager beaver, whose name had been… Nick screwed up his forehead. Carter, that was it.

  ‘You’re number four, aren’t you? The breakfast?’ A middle-aged woman was standing over him with his fry-up. She was speaking very loudly into his ear, so she must have already asked him at least once. He muttered his thanks and she plonked it down, grabbed the plastic flag and made off with it back towards the kitchens. He looked down at the pink bacon, yellow egg yolk, red tomatoes, greasy fried bread triangle and charred sausage and, for the first time, understood Cassie’s point of view. He pushed the plate away. He felt sick and knew it wasn’t just the food; it was panic.

  He thought of Caro – his cousin Caroline who was now married to Pete Malone – did she know about this yet? He’d have to warn her, if she hadn’t already found out. If all the fuss started up again, Pete would inevitably be dragged into it, and Caroline with him. Hell’s bells, they’d all be dragged into it, including himself. There would be newspapermen hanging round the gate. His partners in the firm would be furious. Cassie would hit the roof. Gordana would leave.

  Then there was Pete himself. What would he do when he heard about this? Perhaps he hadn’t seen a paper yet – or switched on the news on the radio or television, or checked online. Perhaps, despite all the sources of information that batter us twenty-four hours round the clock, he was still blissfully unaware. Automatically, Nick reached for his mobile phone. Then he realised that he was sitting in a crowded area and this wasn’t the place. He needed to get back to the privacy of his car. Surreptitiously, he smoothed out the creased paper and tore down the fold to remove the page with the photo on it. This he stuffed into his pocket. Then he abandoned his breakfast, his half-drunk coffee and the mutilated newspaper, and headed for the exit.

  By the time he reached his car, panic had turned to angry resentment. It was so damn unfair. That girl, Rebecca, had never been anything but trouble from the moment Pete had found her snivelling among the plants in the conservatory at Nick’s home. It was that time when his parents were away on a cruise and Nick, master of all he surveyed until they got back, had thrown a really good party. Everyone had had a great time except that girl. And Pete, stupid, kind-hearted, a little bit drunk, had blundered up to Nick demanding help. Nick had appealed to his cousin and persuaded Caroline to ferry the girl over to her house, a quarter of a mile away, and stash her there for the rest of the night. And that had been the start of it.

  It was not surprising, thought Nick bitterly, that the girl had got it into her head that Pete was her knight in shining armour and had fallen for him. She started trailing after him like a puppy. She’d been an absolute pain then and – wouldn’t you know it? – twenty years later, she’d popped up as a pile of bones and was managing to be a nuisance now.

  In the car park he rang Pete’s home number. There was a fair chance Pete wouldn’t have left home yet. It was Caroline who answered in her lazy drawl. She worked from home, except when out visiting clients’ properties or suppliers of expensive interior furnishings.

  ‘He left five minutes ago. Was it urgent?’

  ‘Listen, Caro, have you seen the news at all this morning?’ His voice sounded shaky to his own ears.

  ‘No,’ her voice told him, ‘it’s always doom and gloom. I can’t face news until at least coffee break time. What’s happened? Someone died?’

  ‘Yes, but not recently. Caro, they’ve found Rebecca.’

  There was a silence. Then Caroline’s voice, edgy, ‘Do you mean that dippy girlfriend Pete had years ago?’

  ‘That’s the one! For pity’s sake, you can’t have forgotten! They’ve found her body – well, a skeleton.’

  ‘If it’s a pile of bones, how do they know it’s her?’ Caroline sounded impatient and dismissive. She didn’t like bad news. She never had. Just as, when they were children, she’d hated losing when playing board games.

  ‘I don’t know. The article doesn’t say; but the police have said it is Rebecca, so they must be sure. DNA? That’s what usually seems to do it these days, isn’t it?’

  He heard her give a long-drawn-out hiss. That meant she was cross. But when she spoke, the question really floored him. ‘Is that why that blasted detective is hanging around?’

  ‘Detective?’ Nick’s voice was sounding increasingly croaky to his ears. He felt cold. He had a pain in his chest. Perhaps he was going to have a heart attack. ‘Someone has been to see you?’

  ‘No. We went out for a meal, to the Wayfarer’s Return, you know it?’

  ‘Yes, yes…’ he urged her. ‘Get to the point, Caro!’

  ‘Don’t snap at me or I’ll hang up on you. Pete swears he saw that detective sergeant, what was his name, Carter? Pete says he was there, in the restaurant, dining with a girlfriend, or wife, or something. I told Pete that, even if it was Carter, he couldn’t have been there on account of Pete. He wouldn’t know we’d be there, would he?’

  ‘Did Carter recognise Pete?’

  ‘Don’t think so. But if they’ve found remains, well, perhaps Carter being in t
he Return wasn’t such a coincidence. On the other hand, he might not be a policeman any more. Or, if he is, he must be pretty senior by now. Where did they find this skeleton?’

  ‘That’s just it,’ said Nick. ‘They dug it up in some woods near her hometown, Bamford. Miles away.’

  ‘Well, then,’ said his cousin, serenely, ‘that’s all right.’

  ‘How can it be all right?’ Nick yelped. ‘Don’t be bloody naive, Caro! Not you, of all people!’

  There was silence at the other end of the phone for so long that he asked sharply, ‘Are you still there?’

  ‘Of course I am! Give me time to think!’ Nick waited impatiently and was about to ask her to hurry up, because he was on his way to work and couldn’t hang about indefinitely, when she declared in a very cool, confident way, ‘This has nothing to do with any of us. So don’t panic. They found her on her home turf. That’s where all the enquiries will be made.’

  For a moment he was almost reassured. Caro, under fire, had the coolest head of anyone he knew. But there was still that nagging doubt.

  ‘Even so, don’t tell me they won’t track down Pete again!’

  ‘So what if they do?’ asked Caroline wearily. ‘What can they expect anyone to be able to tell them after twenty years? He couldn’t have told them anything then, and he still can’t. Don’t call Pete. I’ll do that. Leave it with me, all right? And stop panicking! OK, they might just contact Pete. But there’s no reason for any of them to come near you.’

  ‘It’ll be Carter again,’ muttered Nick. ‘He nearly drove Pete to a nervous breakdown last time.’

  She gave a sort of exasperated yowl. ‘Listen, if, by any remote chance, they do want to talk to you, don’t start babbling like you’re doing now. Yes, the bones turning up are a bloody nuisance and inconvenient. But it’s not a disaster. I’ll take care of Pete, and you pull yourself together, Nick! You’re flapping like some old hen. What on earth for? There isn’t anything to worry about, OK?’