Dead on Dartmoor

by Stephanie Austin

  ‘Not really. I mean, I knew him to look at, he was a prefect. But he was years above me, he left last year.’

  ‘But you were friends?’

  ‘He was all right.’ His eyes became shiny suddenly and he looked away. ‘It was horrible what happened to him. Was he really just messing about with a knife?’

  ‘That’s what the police think. Actually, it was a sword. He was carrying it when he jumped up on a fallen tree and slipped.’

  He was silent a moment, taking this in. ‘I was out in the field one day, flying the drone. Gav was going by on his bike and stopped to have a look. Course, he wanted to have a go with it.’ He grinned suddenly. ‘He was hopeless with the controls. Anyway, he wanted me to go up Moorworthy with him, fly it around up there.’

  ‘You mean where the big house is?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘When was this?’

  He rubbed his nose reflectively. ‘Weeks ago, the school holidays had just started. I told him we couldn’t fly it over private property, it’s against the law. But he said he just wanted to look in the woods.’

  ‘Did he say why?’

  Olly’s gaze slid away, eyes hidden by pale pink lids and fair lashes. ‘No.’

  He was holding out on me, but I knew I mustn’t press him too hard, I didn’t want him to clam up altogether. ‘How did you get there? Gavin didn’t drive.’

  ‘We cycled up to Buckfast, picked up the path to Holne Chase. We walked the last bit, Gav wanted us to hide our bikes in the woods. When we got to the gates, we flew the drone up over that long wall, and over them woods, but there were too many trees for us to see much. We couldn’t see the entrance to the mine—’

  ‘That’s what he wanted to see, the entrance to the mine?’

  He nodded.

  ‘Where were you when you were doing this?’

  ‘On that bit of common, across the road,’ he said.

  ‘Sorry, Olly, I don’t know anything about drones. I can see there’s a camera on it.’ It was mounted in the centre, a shiny black eye at the junction of the four legs. ‘But how do you see what the camera is seeing?’

  ‘It sends pictures to my smartphone. We watched on that.’

  ‘Right. But you couldn’t see what Gavin wanted to see?’

  ‘The trees grow too thick. He wanted me to bring it down low, fly it amongst ’em, but it’s too risky. So I brought it round, over a field and then we saw the bloke with the gun so—’

  ‘Whoa!’ I stopped him. ‘What bloke with a gun?’

  ‘When we flew the drone over this field − still on Moorworthy land, like − he was standing there with a shotgun, pointed right at us. He must have been watching it flying above the trees. He was going to shoot it out of the sky. D’you want to see?’

  ‘You’ve still got the film on your phone?’

  ‘I downloaded it onto the laptop. Come on.’ Suddenly fired with enthusiasm, he hopped across the kitchen and into the living room. I followed him and sat at the table as he woke up the laptop and began keying in passwords and other mysterious stuff. The living room had the chilly feel of a room that is not used much, the wallpaper and curtains dating back to the sixties. Apart from a few china ornaments on the windowsill, the only objects of interest were an upright piano and a music stand. After a few moments Olly angled the screen of the laptop so I could see.

  At first I was looking through blades of grass, an insect-eye view, and then as the drone rose higher, it gradually revealed the scruffy turf of the moor, boulder-strewn, with Gavin in his specs, grinning, waving up at it. He looked as if he was really enjoying himself. I felt a tug in my chest at the sight of him; I had never seen him looking so happy. The drone crossed the grey ribbon of road and the wall, going higher again, almost brushing the treetops. Then I was looking down over the impenetrable green mass of trees in full leaf. ‘The entrance to the mine is under there somewhere,’ Olly told me, ‘but we couldn’t see … so I brought the drone back over and … there he is!’

  I found myself looking down into the face of a man in a sagging tweed jacket and flat cap, his shotgun raised, aiming straight at the drone. ‘That’s Moss!’

  ‘D’you know him?’

  ‘I suppose you could say I’ve met him.’

  ‘I pressed home.’ It seemed as if the film speeded up, going backwards over the trees, back over the wall, over the road, until the drone landed amongst the grass. ‘It’s a control that brings it straight back to the launch point,’ Olly explained proudly. ‘I reckon that bloke would have shot us right out of the sky.’

  ‘Some people will go to any lengths to protect their privacy,’ I pointed out.

  ‘I told Gav, you’re not supposed to fly it within fifty metres of private property. But you’re not supposed to shoot at people either, even if they are trespassing.’

  ‘I don’t know if the law applies to drones.’

  ‘I didn’t mean the drone.’

  I stared. ‘You don’t mean he shot at you?’

  Olly’s face was deadly serious. ‘We was just packing up, had got the drone back in the bag, and we heard a shout, and there was that bloke coming towards us with the shotgun, yelling and waving. So we legged it. He fired over our heads.’

  My very brief acquaintance with Moss had given me the impression he was a bit odd, certainly uncommunicative, but he must be an absolute nutter to fire a shotgun in the direction of two young boys, even if he was aiming high to frighten them off. ‘What did you do?’

  ‘We kept running. Then we hid in the woods. We had to wait ages till we were sure it was safe to come out, that he’d gone.’ He gave a grim little smile. ‘Then we had to cycle back home. We were knackered.’

  ‘Did you tell anyone what had happened?’

  ‘You mean, like the police?’ He shook his head. ‘I didn’t want anyone round here, asking questions. My nan—’

  ‘Yes, I understand, but, after all this, you were happy to loan the drone to Gavin on the day of the fete?’

  ‘Didn’t loan it to him, did I?’ he responded bitterly. ‘He was dead keen to go back to this place, wanted me to go with him. But I’ve got Youth Band on a Saturday morning. I told him, I’m not missing band practice just to go to some crappy garden fete.’

  I pointed to the music stand. ‘So, you’re the musician?’

  He shrugged. ‘Not really. I wanted to play the clarinet, but when I tried to join the band, they said they had enough clarinets. They couldn’t get anyone to play the bassoon. No one wanted to play it, so I said I’d have a go. And I like it, it’s sort of sad-sounding.’

  ‘Yes, it is.’ I’d have liked to have heard him play. ‘But getting back to Gavin—’

  ‘He pinched it, didn’t he?’ Olly said in disgust. ‘I come home from school on Friday night, he’d got in here, must’ve found where I keep the spare key. He’s left me a note. He said he was sorry, but promised he’d take care of it and bring it back on Sunday. I thought, he’ll wreck it if he tries to fly it in them woods, he’ll crash it into a tree.’

  ‘Didn’t you try and get it back?’

  ‘I don’t know where he lives, do I? I mean, I know his parents live in one of them posh places up on Druid somewhere, but I’ve never been to his house, don’t know his address. When he didn’t bring it back on Sunday I tried his phone. I was going to try again, when I got back from school, but then they told us he was dead, so …’ He tailed off.

  ‘He didn’t fly the drone on Saturday,’ I told him. ‘It was locked in the car all day. Perhaps he thought better of trying it once he’d been in the woods himself … Olly,’ I began tentatively, ‘you really don’t know why he was so keen to go back to Moorworthy House? He didn’t tell you?’

  He looked down and picked silently at a scab on his finger.

  ‘This is really important, Olly.’

  He wouldn’t look at me. ‘I don’t want to get in any trouble.’

  ‘You won’t, honestly. Only I’m not sure that Gavin’s death wa
s really an accident—’

  ‘I’ve told you I don’t know.’ He looked straight at me then, his little pointed chin lifted obstinately. ‘I want you to go now.’

  ‘Olly—’

  ‘I want you to go,’ he repeated firmly, closing the lid of the laptop. ‘I’ve got to give my nan her tea.’

  I know what I should have done. I should have called Inspector Ford straight away and reported the incident of Moss firing the shotgun. I should have betrayed Olly’s confidence and told him everything he had told me. The police have to investigate any incident involving a firearm. But somehow, I didn’t; somehow I didn’t think Olly’s nan would like her house filled with policemen. Besides, I needed to gain Olly’s trust. He knew why Gavin was so keen to go back into the woods, to find the entrance to the Moorworthy mine. So, even when I had the perfect opportunity, when the inspector phoned me that evening, I held back.

  I’d got out a map of Dartmoor when I got home and spread it on the kitchen table, much to the delight of Bill, who immediately sat in the middle of it. I’d locked him out of the flat that morning, but as always, he found his way back in. I think he has a network of secret tunnels behind the wainscot like one of Beatrix Potter’s mice. Anyway, his entry into the flat is made easy for him at the moment because my bathroom window has been stuck open about six inches for months, letting in considerably more fresh air than I want, particularly when I’m naked and wet. I keep complaining to Adam, who promises he will get round to fixing it, but as the sash cords are broken and he’s probably not capable of dealing with them himself, I doubt if this will be any time soon.

  Despite Bill parking his furry body among the contour lines, I managed to locate the road to Moorworthy, tracing it with my finger until I found the house. The woods were marked as a green-coloured wedge. The thin end of the wedge must have been where Sophie and I had entered, through the little gate in the grounds. The footpath was just visible, if I squinted until my eyes hurt, as a tiny broken line. It was fenced off now, but originally it would have gone right through the woods, disappeared under Bill’s tummy for a bit, and emerged close to a farm building close by. The words ‘Moorworthy Mineshaft, disused’ were written within the green shape of the woods. The farm building was marked as ‘Applecote Farm, abandoned’. The footpath led away from the farm, across open fields to ‘Applecote Pit, mineshaft, disused’. I reckoned the distance between the two disused mineshafts could not have been more than a mile.

  The phone rang. It was Inspector Ford, to warn me that the coroner would be contacting me to ask me some questions about Gavin.

  ‘Will I have to give evidence at the inquest?’

  ‘Not necessarily,’ he said. ‘But she will want to ask you questions about how you found Gavin’s body.’ It was good of him to call me himself. Other police officers might have left such a call to one of his underlings. ‘Collins tells me you were concerned about Gavin’s glasses.’

  He listened politely as I explained my theory about Gavin being chased. ‘There’s no evidence of any pursuit,’ he told me. ‘Of course, from a forensic point of view, it doesn’t help that so many visitors to the fete decided to explore the little woodland during the course of the afternoon. We’ve been contacted by some, but no one saw Gavin or noticed anything untoward.’

  This was understandable. I wouldn’t have found him myself if I hadn’t been looking for him.

  ‘Oh … excuse me a moment.’ The inspector must have turned his face away from the receiver. I heard his voice, slightly muffled, calling to someone. ‘Dale! Where is Collins?’

  ‘On paternity leave, sir,’ a cheery voice replied.

  ‘Has that started already?’

  ‘Last night, sir − a little girl − mother and baby doing well.’

  ‘Excellent. Are we sending any—’

  ‘Flowers for the new mother, sir, present for the baby – all in hand.’

  ‘Thank you, Constable … Sorry about that.’ He returned his attention to me.

  No need to apologise, I was fascinated. So Detective Constable Collins was a new daddy. How sweet. I just hoped the baby looked like her mother.

  ‘Forensics were able to trace the route that Gavin had taken,’ the inspector went on, ‘when he departed from the main path. It was evident from ferns and other plants that had been cut with something sharp, some sort of blade, rather than just broken off. This rather supports your theory that he had gone into the woods to play with the sword.’

  ‘He’d been swiping at the undergrowth with it?’

  ‘It seems so.’

  ‘Just messing about?’

  ‘Well, he didn’t need to clear a path,’ the inspector pointed out dryly. ‘He was walking in lightly covered woodland, not hacking through tropical rainforest.’

  So Gavin had just been fooling around. I could imagine him swaggering and swiping the heads off innocent plants. I began to feel vaguely idiotic.

  ‘And let’s just suppose this was murder,’ the inspector went on, ‘what was the motive? Why would anyone want to kill Gavin Hall?’

  I’d asked myself the same question over and over. ‘Did his phone reveal anything?’

  ‘We’ve found nothing suspicious so far,’ he answered, ‘just some rather strange conversations about Batman.’

  Inwardly I groaned. ‘Gavin was obsessed with superheroes … What about that strange man who came into my shop … creeping someone or other?’

  ‘Creeping Ted Croaker? Yes, we still intend to interview him, find out what his connection to Gavin was, but he seems to have gone to ground. We can’t find him for the moment.’

  ‘Well, if he comes to the shop again—’

  ‘Please get in touch. Well, good luck with the coroner, Juno.’

  This was my moment, before the inspector rang off, to tell him about the incident with Moss and the shotgun. But I didn’t, I let him go. I left the phone, moved Bill and folded up the map. I still didn’t know why Gavin had been so keen to go to the Moorworthy fete, or why he had wanted to search for the entrance to the mine with Olly’s drone weeks before I was even aware that it existed. But I was convinced Olly knew, and the little sod was damn well going to tell me.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  I arrived at Maisie’s next morning, too late to prevent a flood. The smell of hot, wet washing hit me as soon as I opened her cottage door.

  ‘It’s the machine!’ she wailed at me, standing in the kitchen, a shallow puddle of hot soapy water spreading towards her furry slippers. Jacko lapped at it experimentally then thought better of it.

  ‘You’ve forced the door again, haven’t you?’ The washing machine was wide open, water dribbling from its rubber seal, sodden washing in a steaming heap on the floor. I moved Maisie firmly out of the path of the encroaching flood. ‘Why don’t you sit down? I’ll deal with this.’

  ‘It wouldn’t let me have me washing,’ she moaned dramatically, tottering towards her chair. ‘I thought it had finished but the door wouldn’t open.’

  I sloshed through the puddle and switched the machine off. The red light stopped flashing.

  ‘You changed the programme again,’ I told her, pointing to the dial. ‘Now, you know we don’t use that one. I’ve painted the only button you need to use with your red nail varnish, remember? You don’t need to touch anything else.’

  Her face flushed with indignant innocence. ‘I never touched anything!’ At ninety-four, Maisie can lie with the mendacity of someone ninety years younger.

  ‘It must have been Jacko, then.’ I scooped her wet washing into a bucket and reached for a mop.

  ‘I told our Janet I didn’t want that washing machine,’ Maisie said petulantly.

  ‘Our Janet’ was her daughter, who lives up north. She had bought her mother the new machine after the old one collapsed from exhaustion. ‘I wanted one just like the old one.’

  ‘I know,’ I sympathised as I finished mopping, ‘but they don’t make that sort any more, Maisie. You’ve broken the lock again.
We’ll have to get that fella to come and fix it. Give him a call.’ I picked up the bucket of laundry. ‘I’ll wring this lot out and hang it on the line. And don’t come onto this wet floor,’ I warned her, ‘in case you slip.’

  I lugged the bucket into the garden. Wet washing weighs a lot. As I wrung out each garment and pegged it on the line, I thought suddenly of Olly’s garden, of the single floral nightdress blowing in the breeze.

  ‘You ever know a family called Knollys, Maisie?’ I asked when I came back inside. ‘They lived up Owlacombe way?’

  ‘I went to school with a Fred Knollys.’ She was sitting safely on the sofa by now, her feet up on a stool, making a big production number of behaving herself. ‘He’s dead, years ago. Now, he married … what was her name?’

  ‘I’ve met a little boy called Knollys,’ I told her, sitting down. ‘Oliver.’ I smiled. ‘Olly Knolly, they call him.’

  Maisie suddenly laughed, bringing her hands together in a single clap of delight. ‘That’s it!’ she cried, remembering. ‘Dolly Knolly we used to call her! Dorothy was her real name.’ She frowned. ‘She still alive? She must be my age.’

  ‘Olly only has his grandmother, but I think she must be younger than you.’

  Maisie was shaking her head with the certainty of one who can remember years ago, even if she can’t remember yesterday. ‘No. There was no grandson. There was a granddaughter, and she was no better than she should be.’ She rolled her eyes in disapproval. ‘Now, she had a babby … now let me think. Course, he killed himself.’

  ‘Who did? Fred?’

  ‘No. Not Fred!’ she snorted, as if she was talking to an idiot. ‘The son! I’ll think of his name in a minute. Suicide. Ever such a fuss, there was. Vicar only let him be buried in the corner of the churchyard. Mind you, this was years ago, be different now.’

  ‘Are we talking about Oliver’s father?’

  Maisie looked blank. ‘Who’s Oliver?’

  I began to wish I hadn’t started this conversation. ‘The grandson.’