Scattered Remains (Nathan Hawk Mystery)

by Douglas Watkinson

  At Winchendon I pulled up outside Laura’s house, a much altered Victorian clay-tiled cottage standing three doors down from the church and very much in its shadow. A spinster’s cottage if ever there was one. Laura’s description, not mine.

  I knew straightaway that it had been broken into. It had an affronted look to it, like that of an elderly woman to whom an improper suggestion had been made, then acted upon. In less floral terms, the place had been well and truly turned over. In the hall, shoes had been scooped from the cupboard and lay scattered on the tiles. The drawers in the hall table stood open, map books, gloves, keys had been tossed in all directions. In the downstairs cloakroom, the lid on the cistern had been removed and dropped, broken in half. Alongside it were pieces of frosted glass. This was the entry point. A small window pane had been punched in, a hand had reached through to the catch and in they had come.

  In the living room the armchairs had been upended, a coffee table turned over and pushed aside, stereo and television toppled and pulled across the room. Books had been taken from the shelves in armfuls, then dropped in piles. DVDs had been frisbeed against the walls. Most of the ornaments on the mantelpiece and in the recesses had been broken.

  “How dare they!” she said, for the third or fourth time. “How bloody dare they!”

  Up in her bedroom a single forearm had swept her dressing table of all her make-up, perfumes and knick-knacks. Her clothes had been ripped from their hangers, her underwear taken from its drawer and scattered. She stooped and picked up a lacy favourite and looked at me. I shook my head, though I’m not sure what I was dismissing. Possibly the notion that any of this mattered in the great scheme of things. It was a mental platitude I didn’t really believe, so I didn’t voice it.

  “What’s been taken?” I asked.

  She went over to her jewellery box on the bed where its contents had been emptied out onto the duvet.

  “Nothing, as far as I can see, not even gold rings, a pearl necklace…”

  Having checked every room in the house, we ended up in her cubby hole of an office under the stairs. Such papers as were there had been swept aside, pens and pencils tipped out of a clay pot. Her laptop had been taken out of its case and booted up.

  “What was on it?” I asked.

  “Everything or nothing, depending on how you look at it. I’ll stop my credit cards, tell the bank…”

  She’d fought it off up until then, but now gave way to the nausea that most victims of a break-in feel, the sense of having been stripped naked, violated, defiled. She flopped into the swivel chair at her desk and asked, “What the hell were they after?”

  I’d no idea, but I was damned sure it wasn’t her bank details. Even so, she began the long haul of cancelling her credit cards and acquiring new ones while I phoned the local police station, hoping to speak to an old acquaintance there, Detective Sergeant Jim Kelloway. He was on holiday, back on Monday, said the Duty Officer but he’d get someone round to the house as soon as possible.

  About half an hour later a car pulled up on the gravel. I went to the front door only to find that it wasn't a pair of uniforms walking towards me but George Corrigan. I must have smiled, though I certainly hadn’t meant to.

  “What’s funny?” he asked.

  “You just happened to be in the area?”

  “You think SOU and local forces don’t liaise?”

  When Laura appeared, he made a low-key attempt at being sympathetic. It was a monstrous thing to have done, he agreed, to have rampaged through her house like this, even though they didn’t appear to have taken anything. In some ways that made it worse. Did Laura know anyone who might be responsible, a spiteful neighbour, an ex-partner, an aggrieved patient? She couldn’t think of anyone.

  He asked her for a guided tour of the place. It took about half an hour and occasionally I heard soft Irish concern oozing out of him above my head; but when they finally entered the kitchen it was obvious that he hadn’t been consoling her so much as quizzing her.

  “Dr Peterson says you’ve got a few ideas, based on an orthopaedic plate you found?”

  I was keen to discover how much he already knew so I took him through the basics of finding the plate, naming Patrick Scott, and the subsequent disappearance of his records. As far as I could tell it came as news to him, though nothing to get excited about.

  “Takes you nowhere, does it,” he said. “Not to the attack on Jaikie, nor to the break-in here.”

  “Oh, I know who’s behind that. You had this house turned over while we were in London.”

  I saw him calculate his options, all of them versions of outrage, denial or acceptance. In the end he appealed to Laura, as if being a doctor she might be able to give me something for my unwelcome opinion.

  “Why would I do such a thing?”

  “Somebody’s afraid that a country GP has unearthed something significant about Patrick Scott. Maybe it’s valuable and they want to use it, maybe it’s damning and they want it buried alongside him. I don’t care. All I want is for it to lead me to whoever killed him.”

  “If he's dead.”

  “Of course he’s bloody dead. Something that was once inside his body, holding part of it together, has turned up in a local field. Don’t you want to know where the rest of him is?”

  Hands outstretched, he gestured round the overturned house. “So this is, what? A warning to Dr Peterson, telling her to back off?”

  “A warning to me as well. Or do you think somebody threw vinegar at my son to bring out the flavour in him?”

  He smiled and turned away. “I’ll get the usual forensic stuff done here, so if you could leave it as is for the rest of the day…?”

  Laura nodded and I suggested that she spend a few nights at Beech Tree. She went upstairs to pack what she needed.

  “You know, solving straight murders is one thing,” said Corrigan quietly. “This Patrick Scott business is quite another. You might be out of your depth here, Mr Hawk. The under-tow could drag you down.”

  “Don’t go all tidal on me, George.”

  He smiled down at the floor, in restrained tolerance. “I expected a smart-arsed response, but this comes from the heart: you can’t bring Patrick back to life so why not just leave him in peace.”

  “Or what?”

  He winced as if the answer was obvious. “Or I can’t guarantee your safety.”

  “That sounds like a threat. What next? I know where you live, where all your children live?”

  “Not at all. Though I do, as a matter of course. Ellie, she works in an orphanage in Nepal…”

  “What the fuck has that got to do with it?”

  “…and Fee in Tokyo, Electric City. Con, New Orleans. To say nothing of Jaikie, who I’ve grown really fond of.”

  Not for the first time in my life I was confronted by a man half my age, wanting to take his head and slam it down against the kitchen table before he realised what was happening. Corrigan wasn’t just young, however, he was big and fit and well-trained. I’d wait till he turned to go, part the gathering red mist and punch him in the back. However tough you are, a kidney punch feels like a sword running upwards through your torso…

  “Don’t even think about it,” he whispered. He’d read my mind. “Your temper was always your undoing, the reason you were offered early retirement. Full pension, eh, even after striking a fellow officer?”

  Never mind Patrick Scott’s past, this SOU henchman had been digging into mine. It wouldn’t have been difficult. A few old colleagues would have been willing to tell the tale, some of them against me, most of them for.

  I hadn't quite given up on the idea of a stand-up fight, but Laura entered the kitchen, her presence forcing me to see things more clearly.

  “What’s so special about Patrick Scott?” I asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  “You’re just a messenger, eh?”

  He turned to Laura. “I’m sorry about all this, Doctor. Truly I am. Call if you need me.”

/>   He handed her a business card, then took a pace backwards, and then another before turning and heading for the front door.

  I spent the rest of the afternoon dwelling on the indignity of having been put in my place by George Corrigan. After several failed attempts to snap me out of it, Laura left for evening duty at the surgery. I tried to dissuade her. If her colleagues wouldn’t indulge her on this occasion, when would they? She wouldn't hear of it.

  Corrigan had offended me not just with his muted threats but his belief that whatever made Patrick Scott so important was beyond the scope of a detective with 37 murders under his belt. Important to whom, I wondered? I tried to give what little evidence I had a crime context and ran it against some old favourites. Big business and the attendant corruption, always a popular choice, but at this stage difficult to tie in with a muddy field in Dorton. A government faux pas, then, polite French for sexual intrigue, always worth considering and Corrigan was indeed a government employee. Terrorism. That would have been top of most people's list. Not mine, given its growing popularity as a handy panacea.

  I kept coming back to the simplicity of the case. Whatever had happened to this kid, surely he had parents, siblings, a wife, girlfriend, a boyfriend who must at least have wondered what had happened to him? Or was I the only person in the world who gave a toss? And was that self-righteousness on my part genuine or a sign that I was getting drunk? I screwed the cap back on the bottle, returned it to the cupboard and rinsed out the glass, all my way of pretending that I hadn’t drunk three double scotches in under forty minutes. I made coffee. None of it did any good. When Laura arrived home after surgery, she found me asleep in Maggie’s Dad’s rocker, in the pitch dark with the coffee brewed and forgotten.

  “Where’s Jaikie?” were her first words and for some reason they pissed me off. “Only I thought you said you’d keep him close by for a week or two.”

  “When he gets home I will.”

  She picked up the glass I’d used, still in the drainer, and placed it on the shelf where it lived.

  “I’ll make some fresh coffee,” she said. “Not that it does any good, of course.”

  Jaikie and Jodie arrived back from London late that evening, driven by a fully rested Jamal. They were brimming over with the day they’d had, another round of back-slapping and pedestal hopping, questions from the press about being drenched in cider vinegar. Neither of them showed any concern that in just 24 hours the assault had gone from being a sinister mock acid attack to a schoolboy prank. Jaikie rambled on about how much people had loved the film, the script, the direction, his performance and how the reviews in the morning papers had been spectacular, especially one from Richard Slater. And that bloke, Ralph Askew, had phoned just before lunch to say how impressed he and his friends had been, so gripped, so moved, so thoroughly transported…

  Jodie laughed. “Jaikie couldn’t remember who Ralph Askew was.”

  “I still can’t place the guy but according to Slater he’s an MP, Under Secretary for some department or other.”

  “MP for Selingthwaite,” said Jodie, filling in the blanks. “Under Secretary at the Department of Energy and Climate Change. They’re old mates from uni, haven’t seen each other for 12 years.”

  That jarred for some reason. “Those were his words?”

  “Verbatim.”

  “Only ‘we don’t see as much of each other as we’d both like to’ was how he described it to me. Does that suggest a 12-year gap? How did Slater get your number, Jaikie?”

  “I gave it to him when he interviewed me,” he replied, sheepishly.

  “So now you’ve got his. Keep it. I might need it.”

  In the pause that followed it was Jodie who spotted that something closer to home was amiss. Laura hadn’t been her usual self, offering praise and confidence to all who asked for it. She’d been quiet and still bore the marks, especially around her eyes, of a traumatic day.

  “Laura, are you…?” Jodie began.

  “I’m fine, dear, thank you.”

  “She’s anything but,” I said and told them about the break-in.

  They were horrified, expressing their concern with rounds of hugging and distance kissing until Laura had had enough. She excused herself, saying she was thoroughly exhausted and did we mind if she went to bed. With my bedroom being directly above our heads, the kids and I decamped to the kitchen and tried to talk quietly. Jaikie poked around in the fridge for leftovers but with nobody having been here for two days, there wasn’t much to graze from. He made himself a cheese sandwich in the end, offered to make Jodie one, but the news about Laura had spoiled her appetite.

  “What are you going to do about it?” she asked me.

  Her faith in my ability to sort the problem out was flattering and a good deal more assured than my own.

  “I don’t know, hunt the killer down like a dog and in the last ten minutes chase him along the M4, kick box him all round Heathrow, cling onto the wings of the airplane he escapes in…” She smiled politely. “Something, I’ll do something.”

  “You know, Dad, maybe the papers are right. Jealous nutter?”

  “It isn’t just about you,” said Jodie sharply.

  He turned away from her and for the first time since they’d met up again I sensed an awkwardness between them, but quickly put it down to my cluttered feelings and soon our chat became more sociable, the talk smaller. As it veered off yet again in the direction of how brilliant Jaikie had been in All Good Men and True and he began to quote phrases from the morning reviews, I said it was time for me to hit the sack. Jodie rose from the table and Jaikie followed her lead.

  “Dad, by the way, am I still insured to drive the Land Rover?”

  “What makes you think you ever were?”

  “Ah, that means you’ll have to drive Jodie back to her dad’s. Where’s the key?”

  “On the hook by the back door,” I said, eventually. “Drive slowly. Will your father still be up, Jodie?”

  “Definitely. Paperwork.”

  While they went through to the living room to fetch her bag and jacket, I cleared away the fallout from the cheese sandwich and as I did so, my selective hearing began to twitch.

  “…I tell him now?” Jaikie whispered.

  “Not now,” Jodie hissed. “Enough on his plate.”

  “Okay.”

  “But you must, must tell him.”

  I’d been right earlier, then, all was not well in paradise. I guessed they were talking about money. Jaikie had borrowed from me and from Laura, though not in the last 48 hours. Perhaps he hadn’t needed to because the film company had taken care of everything. Or perhaps he’d tried tapping Jodie and she’d asked him the question I’d been avoiding: Why haven’t you got any cash?

  When the kids left, I phoned Martin. As Jodie had said, he was still up and working. The monkeys from the ministry, the DEFRA jobsworths, were on his back demanding to be given chapter and verse on his turkeys, but when I finally got his attention he too was relieved that the attack on Jaikie had only been the work of a jealous nutter. I didn’t set him straight, just told him about the break-in. He was suitably furious.

  “Martin, the spot where Jan found the plate, have you still got it marked?”

  “Wooden stake, right through its heart.”

  “I want you to dig a bloody great hole, six feet deep, 20 across.”

  I explained that I wanted it done before the police started poking their noses in, which wasn’t likely but possible. He said he’d get Jan working on it right away.

  “Is there anyone else you can ask besides Jan?”

  “Have you got a problem with him?”

  I said I hadn’t, but since neither of us had seen him pick up the plate that night, it was just possible that he hadn’t done so.

  “That he put it there himself, you mean? Why would he do that?”

  “Just allow me a few unreasonable suspicions.”

  “Right, I’ll call Phil Mason, first thing. He’s as thic
k as a brick but a good worker.” He then tried to fake complete disinterest, but I could almost see the eyes sparkling with boyish delight. “Is it just a big hole you want, or are we looking for something in particular?”

  “A skeleton, you bloody fool.”

  I couldn’t bring myself to tell him that he wouldn’t find one, but I wanted him to look all the same. Just in case.

  -6-

  I surfaced next morning to the sound of Jaikie downstairs talking to someone on his phone. The actor’s voice was penetrating walls, rounding corners, going through oak doors even when he spoke softly. He was talking to Jamal who had sent him a text earlier saying he would be late, there had been an accident on the M25 and he was stuck between one junction and another. Terrible, terrible. I sensed pure delight in Jaikie’s side of the conversation. Jamal, the fanatical time-keeper, thief of those extra few minutes in bed, had had his comeuppance delivered by a jack-knifed juggernaut.

  I dressed and went downstairs and only then realised that Laura wasn’t in the house, neither in bed behind me nor in the kitchen ahead.

  “She’s left a note by the kettle,” said Jaikie. “Shall I read it to you?”

  I didn’t care for a simple message to be delivered with all the colour he would give it. I clicked my fingers and he passed it to me. The time on it was 5.30am and announced her intention to have Plum Tree Cottage up and running again by the end of the day. She knew I would offer to help, she said, but she would rather do it on her own. It was a job that needed tackling head on, without interference. The word interference had been crossed out and replaced by distraction. She hoped I understood but she would ring me throughout the day. Laura. Love to Jaikie.

  It was lunchtime before I couldn’t stand the thought of her clearing up alone any longer. I walked Dogge round to her house, taking the cut through the churchyard, and found her crouched in the boiler house, torch in one hand, instruction manual in the other, trying to master the central heating.