by Gregson, J M
Those town-dwellers who are silly enough to think themselves superior to countrymen have fixed images of the people they expect to find in a rural landscape. They would have appreciated the image of the rustic leaning on his gate, composed by Punch a century earlier, which now outlives the magazine which created it. But Joe Brooking was no yokel. He could have given you a few more lines of Robert Frost if you had pressed him, and he had read his Thomas Hardy, as well as factual histories of the long nineteenth-century agricultural depression which those novels took as a background.
And he could read a landscape. From this highest point of his kingdom, near to the buzzard which had wheeled intermittently over his head for the last two months, there was history apparent for those who knew where to look for it. Joe’s was not by modern standards a large farm, but it was still the result of an amalgamation between four smaller units. Joe mused as he had before on the harsh lives of those who had tried so hard and so hopelessly to wring a living from tracts so small, so uneconomic. That was one of his agricultural college words, which those desperate scratchers after a livelihood would not even have understood.
He looked towards the hovel, no more than a hundred feet from the river, where one of those anonymous sufferers had lived. His land could have been little bigger than a modern smallholding, sandwiched on uneven ground between the river and the lane, which bent towards it here as if deliberately to squeeze the land into a narrow strait. Only the foundations of what had once been a home remained, the stones having been removed to repair walls elsewhere on the enlarged farm. But beside these there stood what had once been a small barn, still with half its roof intact. Joe’s predecessor had stored machinery in it for a while thirty years earlier, until the cost of repairs outweighed this marginal usefulness and he had left it to decay.
As Joe Brooking looked at that shattered building and mused on the hard, unlamented days it had seen, he caught a glimpse of something white behind it, among the straggling hawthorns which had once been a hedge. Had those buggers with their cars and vans been using his land as a dumping ground again? He had cleared a mattress, a bedstead, a bicycle wheel, even the casing of an old twin-tub washing machine from the ditch a little further down the lane only a month earlier. Now it seemed that they were even invading his land. The barn was almost on his route to the fence he wanted to inspect. He went down the slope of the hillside to investigate.
Where the track from the road ran under the shade of an oak, the ground was still soft enough for him to see tyre marks in the clay surface. Some vehicle had travelled along here, and recently; his anger quickened. The old barn still had half a roof, but there were holes where tiles had cracked and fallen. The wind which had been a pleasant breeze when he leaned upon the gate was colder and stronger here, sweeping along the side of the valley, whining in the ruined rafters like a live thing in search of comfort.
As he came up beside the hole in the barn which had once been a door, he heard another sound. A tapping — irregular but insistent — as if something was being moved by the wind and touching some obstruction. Surely the intruders hadn’t dumped stuff in here? He turned abruptly to his right and went into the barn.
There was nothing apparent in the first section. Ahead of him was an internal wall which was almost in its original condition, having at once supported and been protected by the best remaining part of the roof. The tapping came from somewhere on the other side of it. When he went beyond the wall, he saw at first only the heap of wooden detritus which had been here for years: rotting rafters which had fallen, some worm-eaten floorboards from the house which had once adjoined the barn, an old panelled door with its green paint all but gone.
Then he lifted his eyes from the floor and saw what it was that was making that slight but persistent noise. The heels of black boots, a good two feet above the damp ground, swung gently backwards and forwards, tapping gently against the panel of that long abandoned door, as if demanding entry.
But any entry granted would be in the next world, not this. Joe Brooking’s eyes travelled upwards, over the slim legs, the hands which hung limp and lifeless in front of the hips, the waist which was trim even beneath the thick leathers, to the point where the rope bit deeply into the thin young neck and cruelly distorted the neat black features of the face above it.
Joe Brooking had seen plenty of death, but he looked away quickly from the bulbous desperation of these eyes. In the last convulsions before death, an envelope had come half out of the side pocket of the hanged man. Brooking reached up gingerly and removed it. It was a standard letter from the DVLC at Swansea, reminding the addressee that his road tax would shortly be due.
It was addressed to a Mr Everton Smith.
Chapter Seventeen
The narrow lane had not been designed for motor vehicles. There was scarcely room for the police Rover and the ‘death wagon’ in the space by the entrance to the field; Lambert parked the old Vauxhall further down the road, with its passenger door hard against the hedge. Hook had to scramble awkwardly across the gear lever and the driver’s seat to join him on the lane.
It was two hours now since Joe Brooking had phoned in the news of Everton Smith’s death. The police surgeon had been and gone, spending no more than five minutes over his certification of the formalities of death. As they approached the gate to the field, where fluttering plastic ribbons fenced off the area from the non-existent public, the corpse in its fibreglass ‘shell’ was being carefully eased into the plain van for its journey to the pathologist’s post-mortem table. Bert Hook wondered glumly what next of kin could be dredged up to identify the youth whose father was dead and whose mother had long ago deserted him.
A grim-faced Lambert paused for a moment at the gate to take in the scene of this second death. The Severn moved so slowly here that it might almost have been a lake; the peaceful green pastures ran away on the other side of it towards the Malvern Hills. The landscape which had inspired Elgar seemed a curious backdrop to their business here. The superintendent turned his attention to the more pressing human matters in the foreground of the scene. A hundred yards in front of him, four officers had already begun the detailed searching of the ground around the tumbledown barn where all that remained of Everton Smith had been discovered.
The men kept their heads down as the chief approached with Hook, both of them treading warily on the grass beside the unpaved track so as to make sure they did not confuse any evidence that route might offer. Behind them, they heard the patient tones of the uniformed officer explaining to the ‘death wagon’ driver why he had not been able to allow a vehicle to go down to the barn itself to retrieve the mortal remains of the hanged man.
The method of death was the first thing to check. Sergeant ‘Jack’ Johnson, the SOC officer, took one look at Lambert’s face and decided that this was a morning to be carefully factual and concise. ‘He hanged all right,’ he said, in answer to the superintendent’s first grunted query. ‘The doctor talked about cerebral anaemia and inhibition as well as asphyxiation, but he had no doubt that the lad died by hanging from that beam.’
So the first question which had insinuated its way into devious CID minds — that of whether the man might have been killed elsewhere and strung up here in a crude attempt at deception — was answered. They looked up at the huge transom which ran from the outer to the inner wall of the barn, almost the only sound timber left in the building, it seemed. The rope which had killed Smith hung in a sinister halter from the beam, looking like the instrument of retribution which the law of the kingdom had once brought to convicted killers.
Perhaps it was that thought which made Johnson say rather nervously, ‘It looks at the moment as if the black lad was overcome by remorse, sir. As if he killed Laura Pritchard and then came back here to kill himself when he felt you were close to arresting him.’
‘Back here?’ said Hook.
‘Yes. It seems as if we’ve finally found the place where Laura Pritchard’s body was dumped in the river.�
�� Johnson led them outside and took a single photocopied sheet from the folder in his case. ‘When forensic were able to tell us that the body had been taken to the Severn in the victim’s own car, we took photographs of the tyre treads to compare with anything we found near the river. There are far too many points of access over the ten miles or so where we’re told the body was most probably put in the river. It’s been like looking for a needle in a haystack, but it looks as if Smith has led us back to the place he used.’
‘You’ve found tracks from Laura Pritchard’s car here?’ said Lambert.
‘I’m almost sure of it. We’ll compare soil samples with those we took from the tyre treads to confirm it, but I’m already certain in my own mind.’ Johnson led the way down to the point five yards from the edge of the river where the firm grass ended and bare earth dropped more abruptly towards the water. At the place where the two surfaces met, there was a six-inch long tyre tread mark, not new, but still clear enough in this quiet place to be compared with the picture in Johnson’s hand.
They looked for a moment at the long reach of the river that stretched away downstream, picturing the indistinct figure labouring under its macabre burden — the disposal must surely have taken place under the cover of darkness — the hurried attempts to weight the body, the eventual escape of the corpse from its restraints, and its slow progress downstream to the point where it had been retrieved. Hook said in a voice of infinite, unpolicemanly regret, ‘I never thought it would have been young Smith.’
Lambert looked sharply at the two faces alongside him, then turned his back on the river and walked back towards the barn. The Honda 750, of which Everton Smith had been so proud, was upright again on its stand; it had taken the strenuous efforts of three men to retrieve it from the shallow ditch where it had lain partially hidden. It had taken some time, because they had fingerprinted the machine in situ before attempting to move it. There was a long scratch along the petrol tank where it had fallen upon a stone, cutting across the maker’s lettering. Smith’s delight in the machine meant that the damage leapt out at them like an accusation.
Lambert said, ‘Had the bike been put under those hawthorns deliberately?’
The young PC who stood panting beside the handlebars glanced at his fellows and then said, ‘Yes, sir, I’d say it must have been. If it had just fallen over off its stand, it couldn’t have ended up down there.’ He picked a twig out of his hair and stared at the bike, as if it was deliberately withholding information from him. ‘I suppose he pushed it in there because he didn’t want anyone to see it and come to see what was happening — wanted a bit of privacy for his last moments.’
Hook said, ‘It’s possible, I suppose. But he was very proud of that bike; his instinct would have been to protect it.’ He ran his fingers gently over that livid scratch in the white cellulose.
Johnson, sensing what his fellow sergeant wanted to think, said gently, ‘People about to commit suicide cease to be rational, Bert. And he knew he’d have no further use for the bike.’
‘Did he leave a note?’ asked Lambert.
‘No, sir. Not here, at least; we haven’t searched his lodgings yet.’ They all knew the significance of the question. Suicides usually left a note of some kind to explain their thinking, except on those rare occasions when the deed was a sudden impulse. It was an instinct to write a last, dramatic message in the book they were closing forever. Death gives even the meanest of lives the centre of the stage for a few short hours.
Lambert led the way back into the barn and surveyed the ground beneath the halter. ‘What did he stand on, Jack?’
Johnson said, ‘We haven’t looked at it in detail yet, but it looks as if he made a platform out of those blocks of wood and planks there. You can see that it would have collapsed like that as he kicked it away.’
Lambert looked hard for a moment at the collection of broken and rotting timber, bending to look at two or three of the surfaces, but refraining from touching them. ‘Better get this lot fingerprinted with the rest. If he made himself a platform, there should be plenty of his dabs around. And those boots he was wearing would probably have left some trace, if he stood on this lot and then kicked it away.’
He went outside and looked up and down the eighty yards of unpaved track which led up to the gate and the lane. ‘You did well to keep your vehicles out on the road, Jack. Have you found any traces of other vehicles than Laura Pritchard’s Astra and Smith’s motorbike?’
‘No, sir.’ Johnson tried not to look too pleased in the face of Lambert’s approval of his methods; some of the officers within earshot had cursed him when they had been forced to carry the corpse up those hundred uneven yards to the van at the gate of the field. ‘There are marks from the farmer’s tractor, crossing this track at right angles just up there, but I’d be pretty confident that the bike and the Astra are the only two vehicles that have been down here in the last couple of months.’
Lambert nodded. ‘Extend the search. Look around the place near the gate, where your car is and the van that collected the body was parked. If you don’t find anything there, try the passing places further down the lane, including the spot where my own car is parked at the moment.’
Johnson looked abashed at the widening boundaries of the search area. He said, ‘There are certain to have been other vehicles down there over the weeks. Even on a quiet lane like that there’s —’
‘Ignore any traces except the most recent. You’re only looking for a vehicle that stood there for a little while last night. I don’t think Everton Smith came here on his own.’
*
Joyce Warner had been expecting Lambert. She was glad that he came when her husband was at home. She had a feeling that she was going to need all the support she could muster.
Both of them stood for a moment like self-conscious teenagers when the two large CID men came unsmiling into their lounge. Lambert hesitated a moment when invited to sit down, then nodded curtly and sat with Hook on the sofa; he refused an offer of refreshment. He would rather have seen Joyce Warner without her husband, if only because they might be trapped into contradictions when interviewed separately, but he was well aware that there was nothing he could do about that. Both the people who now seated themselves gingerly in the armchairs to face him were cooperating voluntarily with police investigating a crime.
Lambert said without preamble, ‘Can you tell us where your brother is, Mrs Warner?’
Joyce Warner swallowed hard, forcing her voice to be steady as she said, ‘In London, as far as I know.’
‘And where was he last night?’
‘I really don’t know. I’m not his keeper, you know: he’s twenty-eight now.’ She had meant it to be aggressive, an announcement that she was not going to be pushed around, but her voice quavered and it emerged almost as an apology. ‘What happened last night?’
Lambert ignored the question. ‘We shall need to pick him up for questioning. I should warn you that if you know his whereabouts and are choosing to conceal it, you could be charged with impeding the police in the course of an inquiry.’
He was hard-faced, urgent, demanding their assistance where once he had asked for it. ‘I have reason to think that you concealed information from us about your brother, Mrs Warner. That he has in fact been in the area much more recently than you led us to believe.’
‘What makes you think that Peter —’
‘Did you in fact know that Peter Brooke visited The Beeches on the Friday before your mother’s death? That he may well be the last person known to have seen her alive?’
She looked at her husband. ‘It’s all right, Mark. I didn’t tell you because I felt that there was no point in your knowing. It would only have meant that two of us…’ She stopped, aware that her anxiety to explain herself to her husband had led her into an admission.
It was Lambert who completed her sentence. ‘…That two of you were telling lies instead of one. Concealing information from those anxious to arrest your mother’
s killer.’
‘It’s just that Peter —’
‘And now there has been another death.’
Both eyes widened in the faces opposite him; if one or both of them knew about this second death, they gave nothing away in their countenances. It was Mark Warner who said, ‘Another death? But who —’
‘I ask you again: do either of you know where Peter Brooke was last night?’ They looked at each other, fear and confusion flitting across their faces; perhaps it was not such a bad idea to see them together after all. Lambert said, ‘I advise you to consider your answers very seriously.’
It was Mark Warner who said quietly, ‘I have no idea where Peter was last night.’ They noticed that ‘I’, and the way he looked expectantly at his wife, sitting bolt upright now in the armchair beside him. The news that his wife knew that Peter had been in the area and had concealed the fact from him had driven a wedge between them, for the moment anyway.
Hook, taking his cue from this, looked up from his notebook to say, ‘And what about you, Mrs Warner?’
Joyce Warner, staring straight ahead, said evenly, ‘I have no idea where Peter was last night.’
Hook waited a moment to see if she would enlarge on this before he said, ‘When did you last see your brother?’
‘Two days ago. I met him in Gloucester Cathedral.’
‘For what purpose?’
She glanced at her husband, then at the two relentless faces opposite her. ‘Surely that is our own business.’
Lambert said harshly, impatiently, ‘Surely you must see that it is ours now.’
Joyce Warner glanced again at Mark before she said in a low voice, ‘Peter was scared. He thought you were going to arrest him for killing his mother. He hated her, you know, and he’d made no secret of the fact. He still blames her for Dad’s death: I’ve tried to tell him that isn’t fair but he won’t listen. And he — he thought you’d find out about Mandy.’