The Night Hawks

by Griffiths, Elly

  Simon sits down. ‘I want you to be happy,’ he says, in a slightly more conciliatory tone. ‘I just don’t want you to rush into anything.’

  ‘Why not wait a bit?’ says Ruth. ‘Why not wait until the spring?’ Spring, renewal and rebirth, the dead rising again. She can hear Cathbad’s voice in her head, which is always disconcerting.

  Her father does not seem enamoured of the season of rebirth. ‘No,’ he says. ‘We’ve set a date. December the fifteenth.’

  This is the first Ruth has heard of an actual date. Simon, too, looks taken aback.

  ‘Well, I won’t be going to the wedding,’ he says.

  Arthur looks shocked and even Simon seems surprised at what he’s said. They both look at Ruth, which makes her feel very nervous.

  ‘Let’s not make any rash decisions now,’ she says, trying for a soothing tone.

  ‘Dad’s making a pretty rash decision,’ says Simon.

  ‘I’m not being rash,’ says Arthur. ‘I just want to spend the rest of my life with Gloria. I’ve probably only got about ten years left. Don’t you want them to be happy?’

  This is fairly unanswerable and Ruth can sense Simon weakening. A shame, then, that Arthur follows it up with, ‘And I don’t want to spend my final years without sex, either.’

  Chapter 10

  Nelson looks up at Black Dog Farm. The building is as solid and impenetrable as ever, as square as a child’s drawing, two windows above, two windows below. Even though the Forensics teams have been swarming over it all weekend and have erected a canopy over the front door and a plastic sheeted corridor leading to the back of the house, it still retains its air of mystery. There’s a weathervane on the roof with a black cockerel on it. It’s not moving today as if it, too, is waiting. Douglas and Linda Noakes weren’t farmers, so why on earth did they live here in the middle of nowhere? There’s not another house as far as the eye can see, just flat fields with a few trees and wind-blown shrubs. Nelson is due to meet the Noakes children, Paul and Chloe, at the house. He wants to ask them what it was like to grow up here, so far from their friends and everyday pleasures like cinemas and swimming pools. He often worries about Katie, living in that godforsaken cottage. OK, she loves it now but how will she feel when she’s sixteen and wants to go into Lynn with her friends? Nelson spent his daughters’ teenage years as an unpaid, and often unacknowledged, taxi service. Will Ruth be prepared to do the same? He doubts it sometimes.

  Mike Halloran, who’s in charge of the SOCO team, emerges from behind the plastic sheets. He’s in a white hazmat suit and walks with the ponderous deliberation of a polar bear.

  ‘Anything I should know about?’ says Nelson.

  Mike lowers his mask. ‘I think we’ve got a suicide note,’ he says.

  ‘Really?’ This is news. A note will go a long way towards proving the murder-suicide theory, though they will still have to wait for the forensic tests on the bodies and the guns.

  ‘Where was it?’ asks Nelson.

  ‘In what looks like Dr Douglas’s study. It was in the tray of the printer.’

  ‘The printer? It was typewritten?’

  ‘Yes.’

  This is unusual but then suicide notes are fairly unusual in themselves. Nelson has often been surprised by the way that people seem to take this final, irrevocable step without leaving behind an explanation. But then, maybe, it can’t be explained. Not in words, anyway.

  ‘Can I see?’ says Nelson.

  ‘You’ll have to put on a suit.’

  ‘If I have to.’ Nelson is nostalgic for the days when the police galloped all over a crime scene, perhaps – if they were very conscientious – pausing to tuck their ties into shirt fronts. Now policemen don’t wear ties and they aren’t allowed onto the scene until the experts have swept, tested and otherwise decoded it. Nelson knows that this is progress, and forensics have helped him catch many criminals over the years, but he still hates putting on paper coveralls.

  ‘Will you have the scene clear by the time the family gets here?’ he asks. Paul and Chloe Noakes are due any minute. Judy reported that they seemed conflicted about visiting the site of their parents’ deaths, but Nelson wants them to come. He wants to see the house through their eyes.

  ‘We’re almost finished,’ says Mike. ‘The study will have to be sealed, though.’

  Dressed in a voluminous white suit that crackles as he walks, Nelson follows Mike through the awning. Inside, a plastic walkway has been laid down and Nelson can see numbers on the floor indicating places where the SOCO teams have seized objects or taken samples. He thinks of the last time he entered the farmhouse: the firearms officer kicking down the door, Sara breathing heavily as she raised her gun, the clock ticking, the smell of blood, the shattered face on the floor. The bodies have been taken away but everywhere he looks there’s evidence of the dead couple: gumboots by the front door, the local paper on the mat, a coat hanging on the end of the banisters, a laundry bag on the top landing. Douglas and Linda had been going for walks, reading the papers, doing their washing. What had happened to make their lives stop so suddenly?

  ‘Before we go upstairs,’ says Mike. ‘There’s something you should see.’

  He pushes open a door to the left of the hall, not touching it with his hands even though he’s wearing gloves. They are in a white-walled room with a desk, two chairs, a sink and what looks like a hospital bed, covered with plastic sheeting. There are also two filing cabinets that look very locked.

  Nelson sniffs the air. There’s an antiseptic smell that reminds him, morbidly, of the mortuary.

  ‘Well,’ says Mike. ‘What do you think?’

  ‘It’s like a doctor’s surgery,’ says Nelson. ‘Douglas Noakes wasn’t a GP, was he?’

  ‘No, he was a research scientist. But this looks very like a place where you’d see patients.’

  Nelson looks at the bed. He hasn’t been to the doctor for years, but he remembers accompanying Michelle for scans when she was pregnant. Well, he was there for most of them, he thinks, defensive even to himself. He remembers thinking at the time about the indignities that women have to go through. The plastic-covered bed reminds him of that.

  Mike leads the way out of the room and they climb the stairs. There’s still a bloody handprint on the wall where Linda had breathed her last. Nelson and Mike edge past, crabwise. Mike opens a door off the landing, again using his elbow to push down the handle. They are in a small room, very tidy, just a desk and a chair, a bookcase full of scientific-looking tomes, a large metal filing cabinet. A closed laptop lies on the desk and, next to it, there’s a printer. A piece of paper lies where it was spewed out by the machine. By twisting his head, Nelson is able to read the few lines at the top of the page. He wishes that he could put his glasses on.

  It’s just impossible to go on. I’m sorry for all the things I’ve said and done. For the body in the garden and all of it. I’ve been a bad father but I hope that, when all this is over, my scientific work will still be taken into account. My family knows how I feel about them.

  Douglas Noakes

  ‘Jesus.’ Nelson looks at Mike.

  ‘Yes.’

  Nelson glances at the window which looks out over a large and overgrown garden.

  ‘The body in the garden?’

  ‘I thought you’d like that bit,’ says Mike.

  ‘We need to get digging,’ says Nelson. ‘We need a forensic archaeologist. We need Ruth.’

  Paul and Chloe Noakes are waiting outside. Judy is with them, keeping just the right distance away. Judy is excellent with families, she knows exactly when to speak and when to be quiet, when to coax and when to drop back. Not for the first time, Nelson prays that she’s not looking for DI jobs elsewhere.

  Chloe Noakes is a small, slight woman, dressed in jeans and a padded jacket. Paul is thin too but he’s very tall, perhaps a foot taller than
his sister. They must look very odd in family photos. Nelson tries to remember if he saw any such photos in the house. There were none in the study, that’s for certain. The walls had been bare.

  Nelson approaches the group.

  ‘I’m DCI Nelson. I’m sorry for your loss.’

  Chloe looks taken aback. Perhaps it’s the suit.

  ‘I was told we could go in the house,’ she says.

  ‘You can,’ says Nelson. ‘We’re just waiting for the Forensics team to finish.’ As he speaks, the awning is coming down. Nelson moves away to climb out of his suit. Impossible to do this sort of thing with any dignity. He can hear Judy explain about the scene-of-crime work. ‘They’re very careful, very respectful. They won’t miss a thing.’ Mike always says that every contact leaves a trace. ‘You could leave this room,’ he tells them in briefings, ‘and I could tell you exactly where you were all sitting.’

  ‘We’ll have to be careful not to touch anything in the house,’ Nelson says now. ‘And some things will be distressing for you. I’m sorry.’

  Chloe takes her brother’s arm. ‘Come on, Paul.’ The small woman leads the tall man into the house. Nelson and Judy follow them. Chloe leads the way into the kitchen. There’s a newspaper still open on the table. The Times, Nelson thinks. A Guide Dogs for the Blind calendar is on the wall, a chocolate Labrador for September. But what they all see immediately is the brown stain on the yellow linoleum. Paul gasps. Chloe puts her hand on his arm. Chloe seems remarkably composed. She was the one who identified her parents’ bodies in the morgue. Nelson is pretty sure that Chloe will cope. He’s less sure about Paul.

  ‘Is this where Dad . . .?’ says Paul.

  ‘Dr Noakes was found here,’ says Nelson. ‘He had been shot in the head and a gun was beside him. Did your father own a handgun?’

  ‘No,’ says Paul. ‘I don’t think so. He had a shotgun though. He used to shoot rabbits sometimes.’

  ‘Keeping the population down,’ says Chloe, her voice even. ‘That’s what he said.’

  ‘Are you sure . . .’ Paul’s voice is quavering, ‘are you sure . . . that he killed himself?’

  ‘We can’t be certain until we see the forensics results,’ says Nelson, ‘but it does look that way.’

  They walk back through the hallway with its brown and yellow geometric wallpaper. Nelson is hardly an expert in contemporary interior design but even to him it seems very old-fashioned – from the sixties or seventies, perhaps? The grandfather clock is older and has more gravitas. It continues its ponderous ticking.

  ‘I want to show you something,’ says Nelson. He pushes open the door to the small room with the smell of antiseptic.

  This time it’s Chloe who gasps.

  ‘Was this room open? He kept it locked . . .’

  ‘As far as I know it was open,’ says Nelson. ‘Did your father see patients here?’

  ‘He wasn’t a GP,’ says Chloe, who is one herself, of course. ‘He was a scientist. He owned a research company in ­Cambridge.’

  Nelson notes that Chloe has no problem referring to her father in the past tense.

  ‘So you’ve no idea what this was used for?’ He points to the plastic-covered bed.

  ‘No,’ says Paul. ‘Can we leave now?’

  They go back into the hall. Paul looks up at the stairs. Nelson hopes that he can’t see the handprint.

  ‘Is this where . . . where Mum was found?’

  ‘Mrs Noakes was at the top of the stairs,’ says Nelson.

  Paul turns away, sobbing, almost retching. Chloe says, ‘Did it look as if she was running away from him?’

  ‘It did,’ says Nelson, ‘yes.’

  ‘I need to get out,’ says Paul. He stumbles out through the front door. The others follow him. Paul is standing with his back to the house, looking out at the fields. Chloe goes up to him and puts her hand on his arm. Judy says, ‘Do you need a moment? We could talk back at the station if you prefer. I know this must be very hard.’

  ‘It’s all right,’ says Chloe. ‘It’s just . . . seeing where it happened.’

  Nelson says, ‘You should know that we’ve found a piece of paper that looks like a suicide note. I can’t show you the letter itself yet but here’s a photograph.’ He hands Chloe his phone and the siblings lean in to look at it. Judy raises her eyebrows at Nelson. It’s the first she’s heard of the note.

  ‘Does that read like something your father would have written?’ says Nelson.

  ‘Yes,’ says Chloe, ‘it does. He was always keen on getting his due recognition. His work was everything to him.’

  ‘Do you know what he means by the body in the garden?’

  ‘Dad used to say that there was a dead body in the garden,’ says Paul. ‘He said that, if we didn’t behave, it would rise up out of the ground and kill us.’

  This is said in an absolutely flat voice but, for the first time in his life, Nelson feels the hairs standing up on the back of his neck. The house is behind him and suddenly he wants to turn to check that it hasn’t moved, that it isn’t watching them.

  Chloe says, ‘Just so that you know, Paul and I hate this place and we hated our father. We’re glad he’s dead.’

  Chapter 11

  By midday, Ruth is beginning to admit, cautiously, that the first day of lectures is going well. She had the first slot, with An Introduction to Archaeology, and she was pleased that the students seemed engaged and asked interested questions. She didn’t sit in on the other sessions because she thought that would be off-putting for the lecturers but she hovered in the corridor and coffee area and was half-pleased, half-irritated to hear the freshers coming out full of praise for David’s talk on the Neolithic era.

  ‘That guy is sick,’ says someone. Ruth is pretty sure this is a compliment. She knows that she should be pleased that her new appointee is proving popular, but she worries that this will make David more arrogant than ever. She also can’t help hoping that the students will still like her best.

  She goes back to her office to prepare for her first tutorials and sees that she has a missed call from Nelson. What can he want? He’s not due to see Kate until the weekend. Maybe it’s about the body on the beach but Nelson said on Saturday that they didn’t have an identification yet. Maybe he wants to ask how Sunday went. Unlikely but possible. She rings him back.

  ‘Ruth.’ No pleasantries, as ever. ‘Can you come to Black Dog Farm?’

  ‘Black Dog Farm?’ The name rings a faint, and rather ominous, bell.

  ‘It’s near Sheringham,’ says Nelson.

  ‘Is that the place where those people were found dead the other day?’

  ‘That’s right. Can you come?’

  ‘Nelson,’ says Ruth. ‘I’m working. I can’t come racing over to Sheringham at a moment’s notice.’

  Nelson never really believes in anyone else’s work. It’s one of the many infuriating things about him. Unfortunately, knowing this doesn’t make Ruth feel any differently about him.

  ‘Can you come later?’ he says. ‘When you’ve finished.’

  ‘I’m not finished until four and then I’ve got to collect Kate from the childminder.’

  ‘Bring Katie too. She doesn’t need to go inside.’

  ‘Go inside where?’

  ‘The farmhouse. It’s the garden I want you to look at.’

  ‘The garden?’

  ‘I’ll explain when you get here. It won’t take long and it’s on your way home.’

  ‘No, it isn’t.’

  ‘I think you’d find it interesting.’ Should Ruth wait until he says ‘please’? But, in that case, she might be waiting for a very long time.

  ‘I can’t stay long,’ she says.

  ‘That’s fine. I’ll meet you there. About five?’

  ‘OK,’ says Ruth, agreeing, as she had always known she would.
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br />   ‘He was abusive,’ says Chloe. ‘I’m sure you’ve heard this sort of thing before.’

  They are sitting at a wooden table with bench seats attached, the kind found in the beer gardens of pubs. This one looks out onto the back of Black Dog Farm, an overgrown space vaguely bordered by rockery stones and some half-hearted shrubs. Nelson tries to look at it with Ruth’s eyes. What did she say about nettles being a sign of human presence, maybe even a body? Well there are plenty of nettles here as well as brambles and knotweed and some prettier weeds with white flowers. It’s an unloved garden but, in the autumn sunshine, it’s not an entirely unpleasant place.

  Paul and Chloe sit on one side of the bench, Judy and Nelson on the other. Chloe is telling them about her father, her voice level and dispassionate. A doctor’s voice. Paul sits beside her, picking at the skin around his fingernails.

  ‘It wasn’t really physical, though he did hit us. It was mental cruelty. If we liked something, a book or a TV programme, he’d ban us from reading or watching it. He even stopped us watching Blue Peter, for God’s sake. He wouldn’t let us have friends over or listen to music. It was about power and control, of course. All we were allowed to do was work. He wanted us to study and become scientists, preferably doctors.’ She laughs, without humour. ‘Well, I followed his instructions to the letter.’

  ‘I didn’t,’ says Paul. ‘He was furious when I decided to study history at university. He hasn’t even got my graduation picture up. Only yours.’

  ‘Remember what he said to your history teacher?’ says Chloe.

  ‘You’re corrupting my son.’ Paul adopts a deep voice that’s obviously meant to be his father. ‘You’re a disgrace to the profession.’

  ‘Your history teacher,’ says Nelson, ‘was that Alan White?’

  ‘Yes,’ says Paul. ‘Alan supported me. He’s still a good friend.’

  ‘You were with him and the Night Hawks when a man’s body was found on the beach on Wednesday night, weren’t you?’ says Nelson.

  ‘Yes. I gave a statement to the police.’