Ashes From Ashes

by Barbara Gaskell Denvil

  “But it’s still legally yours.”

  “Oh, we’ve signed all sorts of stuff, and they’ve promised the house will be returned to us eventually. In the meantime, Debbie and dear Brian have found another house over the other side of the village. We promised to help with the mortgage.”

  Sylvia thought a moment. “We’re off there for another dig around. Coming?”

  Stella shook her head with a sigh. “Must admit, dear, we’re both a little tired of the whole thing. Half our savings tied up in crime. Well, honestly. Not what we could ever have expected.”

  Harry smothered a snigger. “Enjoy your soldiers.”

  Stella waved a long wedge of toast. “Your pal Morrison doesn’t go there anymore. He has a team of fifty, would you believe, all searching the countryside. Tramping through mud, snow and bog, poor souls.”

  It was later that day when Sylvia asked Morrison, “Darcey dear, what are you hoping to find?”

  D.I. Morrison peered at her as though from a distance. “What do all good coppers look for? Crime and criminals, my dear. Naturally.”

  “More houses with chimneys full of bodies?” Sylvia leaned forwards over Morrison’s desk. “A friend told me you’ve increased your team. There’s five thousand detectives scouring the land. What for? Well, I suppose whoever it is has been frightened away from the mock Tudor place, and must now be practising their disgusting game in another sound-proofed cellar.”

  “Precisely,” Morrison smiled. “But abduction and murder can take place next door without anyone knowing a thing. It’s been done. Soundproofing cellars, even sheds. Attics. Girls imprisoned, and nobody knows for years. It often seems ludicrous after discovery, and yet some poor girl could have sobbed her heart out for months within a few feet of your nice quiet bedroom.”

  Harry remembered reading about several. “But no one bothered soundproofing that last place. It was too isolated to be risky. So will the killer use the same tactics again? They usually like a modus operandum, don’t they?”

  “Eve Daish has been missing for more than a month.” Sylvia tapped her fingers on the desk. “She’s been kidnapped too, hasn’t she? Same man?”

  “It seems likely.” Morrison sighed. “But we can’t be sure. She was on foot and could have had an accident, fallen and still not been found. Or – which seems probable – she’s been taken by our local monster.”

  “And Lionel Sullivan escaped at about the same time.”

  But Morrison sighed again. “Eve Daish disappeared on the same day as Sullivan’s escape. That would have been an unlikely piece of luck for him if he’d encountered his next victim within minutes of escaping. Besides, the bodies in the chimney had not been treated with the savage mutilation that Sullivan doled out, and had been there for years. A different criminal without doubt.”

  “But you haven’t found Eve?” asked Sylvia.

  “And you haven’t found Sullivan?” asked Harry.

  “I haven’t even found my basic common sense,” Morrison said, tipping back in his chair. “Discovering someone who hasn’t left the slightest clue, is remarkably difficult. Well, clues, yes – perhaps. DNA, and that’s the best clue of all. But it has to fit someone. And for your interest, it doesn't fit Sullivan or anyone else on the computer records.”

  “I suppose,” said Sylvia with faint accusation, “you couldn’t do a door to door DNA test?”

  He shook his head. “Who did you have in mind, Sylvia dear? All two million men in Gloucestershire? Or just the ones we don’t like the look of?”

  “Are there really that many people in Gloucestershire?”

  “I haven’t the faintest idea,” Morrison told her. “But if we narrowed the search down to a village or a street, we might do that. But we can’t even be sure he’s still in Gloucestershire. He could have moved on anywhere. Even abroad. He has no passport, but a false identity is easily bought. I expect you know we lost Mark Howard as well.”

  Nodding, Sylvia said, “We came about that really – more than the other. We went to dinner with Kate and the twin brother. Even when you told us about the brother, I assumed Kate didn’t know a thing. She’s sweet and really innocent. Maurice too. Very popular with the kids at school, I gather. But over dinner, Kate sort of let things drop. She kept on that Mark was going home today. True? But she seemed too adamant, as if it was so we’d pass it on. And she said Mark has another house in ‘C – U’ – and then quickly covered up and said Cumbria. Maurice didn’t really say anything. More astute. But I couldn’t help disbelieving Kate, even though I like her. I mean – I suppose she’d just be loyal to her brother-in-law.”

  Morrison appeared more interested and sat forwards. “Not my case, as you know,” he said. “But two of the men from the Yard have been here, following up. Interviewed the school teacher at great length, and Kate Howard too although only briefly.” He picked up the internal phone on his desk and mumbled into it for a couple of minutes. “Jeremy? I have someone here who might interest you. Two people actually. Friends of mine, but they might know something. Want a word? Come on down.”

  With a stare of curiosity, both Harry and Sylvia waited, and within five minutes a slim man pushed open the door, pulled up a chair and leaned both elbows on Morrison’s desk. Morrison made the introductions. “DCI Archibald. Mr and Mrs Joyce are friends of mine, and recent friends of Mrs Howard, had dinner with her and Maurice last night. I think you’ll have a lot to say to each other.”

  “I’m sure we could all do with some decent coffee,” said the DCI. “I’ll ask someone to make it, and then we can start.” The coffee at least smelled of coffee. “I’m here for a few more days before the new man gets sent down from the Met,” he continued through slurps. “Cramble. Not a friend. I want to cover as much as possible before he gets here. So let’s begin.”

  With increasing doubts, Sylvia explained how innocent she knew Kate to be. „She obviously knows who the brother is. But maybe she’s been told not to talk about him since he’s in big business and there’s always danger of inside trading and all that stuff I don’t understand.“

  „Perhaps,“ Archibald raised an eyebrow, „she could have been threatened with some kind of punishment if she talks out of place?“

  It was Harry who shook his head, then scratched his earlobe. „She doesn’t strike me as someone easily frightened off. And Maurice wouldn’t threaten a mosquito.“

  After a couple of hours, feeling entirely exhausted, Sylvia and Harry said goodbye to the Chief Inspector and waited until he marched from Morrison’s office, closing the door quietly behind him.

  “Gracious, I can remember my father being like that,” said Sylvia, gathering her wits. “Once he got going, you felt you’d been beaten with a wooden paddle over and over, just as though you were the criminal yourself. I need a whisky.”

  “Clearly!” smiled Morrison, “I’m far too easy going since I don’t affect you like that.”

  “Thank goodness,” Harry said, getting up and heading towards the door. “You’re human. We’ll go on looking for Eve, and Lionel Sullivan. I’m not really interested in this Mark Howard person. Well, I know what he looks like because of Maurice looking the same, but I don’t expect to find a high power like that. He’ll move in sky-high circles. But the main quest is the killer. A feeble probability, but it worked last time.”

  “By getting yourselves into danger,” Morrison added. “Don’t do anything like that again.”

  Sylvia stood with Harry’s help. “Love to Peggy,” she said. “And I promise we’ll be good.”

  “Much as I’d appreciate the sublime justice of you finding the poor young woman,” Morrison said, “I cannot see how you’re going to discover someone locked away in a cellar or attic in total pre-arranged secrecy. And please don’t suggest knocking on every door for miles around. Evidently, the brother and the old boyfriend are the principal suspects, although personally I doubt if it’s either of them.”

  “So you definitely think it’s the chimney man?”


  “What I think,” said Morrison, “is that I should get back to work and you two should go home for a nice chat with the wealthy old folk of Little Woppington-on-Torr.”

  But it was not where they went. Driving in almost the opposite direction, although with little hope of being permitted entrance, Harry and Sylvia went back yet again to the mock-Tudor house, now commonly known in the press as ‘The House of Horrors.”

  Almost deserted, they were surprised to discover the gardens, now little more than a ploughed field, unattended. The house itself was encircled with blue and white plastic strips, almost like the wrappings on a birthday gift. Here there were police standing guard, and others clearly unearthing and battering within. Bang followed crash.

  “We couldn’t ask for more,” mumbled Harry, parking carefully out of sight. “That tunnel is wide open to the sky now, but it’s not being guarded either. You want a run through a tunnel that isn’t a tunnel anymore? And you’ll end up in that same old nightmare cellar with shadows like vampires.”

  Looking at him, Sylvia smiled suddenly. “You’re getting quite fantastical, my love. You’ll be reading Tolkien soon instead of Clive Cussler and that Child person.”

  “Thrillers are best,” Harry scratched his earlobe. “Though why I want to read books full of murder and excitement, I don’t know. Well – since that’s what I’m trying to figure out in real life.”

  “Come on then,” but she wasn’t jumping out of the car, “let’s go inside while we can.”

  But Harry said, “No, my love, let’s give it a rest today. I’m wearing the wrong shoes. These will be full of mud after two steps in the quagmire down there. If you insist, I’ll wear my hiking boots tomorrow, and we can come back here.”

  With a cup of hot milk between her cupped hands, Eve was so terrified of wasting one drop, so thrilled for the warmth both against her palms and in her throat, that her arms shook and she hunched over the cup, sipping with reverence.

  “You likes?”

  “Oh yes indeed. Thank you.” The cup was now half empty, but both the heat and the taste were delicious on her tongue, against the inside of her mouth, her gums and teeth, while her throat felt roasted by pleasure.

  “Yum.” Master watched her, his smile growing. “Tis good, huh? From nice Master.”

  It was the first time anything remotely warm and soothing had entered her mouth for a very, very long time. She appreciated the food she was occasionally given, however unpleasant, however cold and stale, however partly chewed. Food was always an enormous hope, and its arrival was always joyous. But hot and fresh food was virtually unknown. “Oh yes, nice Master. Thank you, Master.”

  She had heard the other voice again, busy outside in the room Master used. “Hot milk, it will be good for you.”

  “And my little lady?” Master had asked.

  “Why not, if that’s what you want.”

  And the door had opened, Master hobbling in and bringing the milk. Steam rose from the large mug. The door had closed behind him, and she had not seen the man behind the other voice.

  But she had remembered a great deal. Now she knew exactly who had offered her a lift home that fateful and misbegotten evening, and she knew why she had accepted, and she knew the owner of the other voice.

  “Do you like him? I mean your Number One?” She nodded towards the closed door. She had finished every single last drop of the milk. Otherwise she would not have risked asking a single question. She had also wiped her finger around the inside of the cup, scraping up every taint of heat, steam, and liquid.

  Master was surprised. “Course. I likes him ever so. But that’s,” and he nodded as Eve had done towards the other room, “Number Two. He’s ever so kind. Heated that fer you, he did.”

  “I heard you ask. Thank you. That was kind too.”

  “Is I kind? I dunno. But now you gotta play.”

  She had expected that. “I will,” she told him, “but he won’t come in while we’re – playing – will he?”

  “No, he don’t like watching,” Master said. “Reckon he’s gone. So’s, you gets on floor and does wot I tells ya.”

  The milk had been worth it.

  One last risk. „Does he – have a nice name too?“

  Master kicked her in the nose, and the blood stung. “Not allowed ta tell and you knows it.“

  Chapter Fifteen

  Kicking his shoes off, Harry sat back on the large armchair in their bedroom, clasped his hands behind his head, and decided, “A girl that age, well – what is she? – seventeen? She ‘s either been killed in an accident or been abducted. It’s obvious. Even Morrison admits that. She hasn’t made a phone call, and her phone can’t be traced any longer. Last place was out on the road where she’d have walked on her way home from that party. But the police have searched every inch. No phone, no clothes, no body. And she hasn’t used her credit card or ATM card for the same length of time. So – dead or kidnapped.”

  Sylvia, rustling in the wardrobe, called back, “And if Darcey’s right, poor Eve has been abducted by the Chimney Killer. Which means she might also be dead by now.” She reappeared from the wardrobe. “I can’t find your hiking boots, dear. I can’t even find my own.”

  He stood at once and went to peer out of the long window at the small balcony outside. The rain was dripping from the iron railing, but the paved area behind the row of pot plants, now only full of twigs, was sheltered beneath the overhanging ledge of polystyrene, and there beneath sat two pairs of heavy brown boots.

  “You’re getting forgetful, my love.” Harry pointed. “We put them out because they were covered in mud. But they aren’t catching the rain, and they need a thorough washing.”

  Reluctantly, Sylvia pulled out a copy of yesterday’s Times from the small table, and spread it out on the rug by the window, then opened the long glass door. She reached out a hand, and grabbed first Harry’s boots and then her own, dropping them onto the newspaper. Mud splattered. “We could put them in the bath,” she said.

  “Or the Torr River,” muttered Harry. But he bent down and eyed the boots sitting in their own sludge on the paper. “Alright,” he said. “I’ll clean them up. Yours too. You sit down and have a rest.”

  She didn’t argue, turned on the radio, and took Harry’s place in the large squashy armchair. The radio was playing one of her favourites from Turandot, and she closed her eyes, entering the blissful tunnel of the music she loved. Harry stumbled into the bathroom, boots collected in a soggy paper wrapped parcel. The taps in the shower were turned on and a puff of steam found its way out into the bedroom. Sylvia murmured, “I feel guilty, thinking of that poor girl Eve. Is that crazy? But I’m so happy these days, my love, with you and the comfort here, and Morrison. Even Ruby’s more relaxed. Above all because of you, my dearest. You’ve changed my life. And that helps me want to change other people’s lives.”

  She waited for a sweet reply. Harry was good at sweet replies. But this time the reply was an echoing roar. “Sylve, come here. Look. Quick.”

  It sounded as though he was drowning in the shower. Sylvia leapt up and into the steam filled bathroom. Harry was holding out one of his boots. “What?” she demanded. “Darling, You’re dripping melted mud.”

  He turned the boot over, its laces still clogged and showed something small which had stuck to the sole amongst the dirt. “Look here,” and when she looked, he said, “This could be damned important. The paper – look. And no, not a McDonald’s wrapper but it came from the tunnel, which is the last time I wore them.”

  “I took my lenses out,” Sylvia was peering closely, “so I can’t read it. Too tiny. Just a corner of a label. Are you sure it’s from the tunnel? And does it matter?”

  “Yes, I’m damn sure it matters, and yes, I’m bloody sure too.” He waved the boot in front of his wife’s face and two large blobs of wet earth patterned her cheek. “I have to phone Morrison immediately.” He put the boot down carefully, sole uppermost, and marched back into the large
bed-sitting room.

  Sylvia stood beside him and listened carefully to what Harry was saying on the phone. He was looking and sounding both triumphant and a little embarrassed. “Rohypnol. That’s – ”

  “I know exactly what it is,” Morrison’s voice came over the phone. “Stay exactly where you are, protect that scrap of paper with your life, and I’ll be over in minutes.”

  “Rohypnol surely isn’t sold in the chemists?” said Ruby. “Isn’t that the rape drug? Surely you have to buy it online?”

  “I suppose so.” Sylvia was counting coins for the weekly pocket money both of them had decided to give to Arthur’s son David in exchange for a couple of odd jobs. “It would have been so much easier to go around all the local shops and find who has been buying packets of Rohypnol regularly over the past few years. But I presume you can’t trace internet sales?”

  Ruby had no idea. “All those police things they do these days, I mean, they can do everything, can’t they?”

  “Except find the murderer.”

  “Well, they trace phones and they can hack computers and all that identification by blood stuff. Doesn’t Detective Morrison tell you all about these things?”

  “No, he doesn’t,” Sylvia collected the coins in a small pile. David preferred coins because he could count them and they looked more like money. Half disappeared into a large money box shaped like a hedgehog, whereas the other half disappeared just as quickly in the local sweet shop. “He’s a friend, and he tells us all sorts and welcomes the little bit of help we offer,” Sylvia continued, looking up. “But nothing about private police work and no secrets or inside stuff. Well, I don’t mind that. But I still wish we could find Eve.”

  “Rohypnol,” Ruby persisted, “dissolves in drinks and makes the girls fall asleep. Unconscious. They don’t wake up for ages.”

  Sylvia knew this. “It explains how the killer drugged and then murdered the girls, poor little things.”

  “But no fingerprints on that label?”