by J. R. Ellis
‘That’s useful, thank you. Did you get on OK, I mean as neighbours?’
There was a pause.
‘He wasn’t bad, I suppose,’ replied the woman. ‘Not much trouble really. We didn’t have much to do with him; although you used to get a few noises coming through the wall now and again.’
‘What kind of noises?’
‘You know, people . . .’
‘She means when he was shagging women.’ The man laughed and his partner giggled.
‘Shut up, Gary!’
‘I see. Did he do a lot of that then?’
‘Quite a lot, yes, and sometimes women from the village.’
‘Did you see any of these women going in and out?’
‘No, but we heard him going in and out.’ The fat bloke burst into raucous laughter again.
‘Seriously, Mr . . . ?’
‘Shaw, Gary Shaw.’
‘I’m Carol.’
‘Did either of you see them?’
‘Well, if we did that would be telling. It’s none of our business. We don’t go telling business round the village like some busybodies do.’
Carter toughened his stance and his language turned formal.
‘Mr Shaw, Mrs Shaw. This is a murder enquiry. I have reason to believe that you possess important information in relation to this investigation and I must ask you not to withhold it; if you do, you may be committing an offence.’
This made an impact.
‘You’d better come inside a minute,’ said Carol, ‘and by the way I’m not Mrs Shaw, Carol Anderson’s the name. I wouldn’t get married to that fat git.’ At this, the pair of them burst out into laughter yet again.
‘Inside’ proved to be quite an experience. The living-room walls were painted a darkish shade of purple and the pictures hung up were a vivid combination of sci-fi horror and pornography. Faded African throws covered a dusty sofa and the worn carpet looked as if it hadn’t been vacuumed for weeks. The air was heavy with the scent of joss sticks and other unmistakable odours, which meant that Carter didn’t need to ask what this pair grew in their garden. However, in the circumstances he decided to overlook it. He sat on a chair while the couple sank into the sofa.
‘What can you tell me?’
‘I haven’t seen anybody and I don’t spread rumours.’ Gary Shaw was still insistent. He turned to Carol. ‘But you said you once saw somebody you recognised.’
Carol leaned forward and whispered as if they could be overheard through the walls.
‘I saw a woman leaving the house. I went downstairs for a glass of water; I heard a noise outside and had a peep through the window. She and Dave were kissing, then he went back inside and she left. It must have been about two in the morning.’
‘You definitely recognised her?’
‘Yes. I was quite close to them but there was no light on in the room so they never thought there was anybody there looking.’
‘She likes watching other people at it.’
‘Shut up!’ bawled Carol and they both roared with laughter again.
‘And who was this woman?’
Gary answered.
‘Anne Watson. Her and her husband Bill run the gift shop just down the road. It’s called the Wharfedale Gift Shop.’
‘Thank you.’ Carter took down the information in his notebook. That was confirmation of what Trevor Booth of the Red Horse had said.
‘Did Mr Watson know about the affair?’
‘We never said anything,’ said Gary defensively.
‘No, sir, I wasn’t implying that you did.’
‘I think he did get to know,’ said Carol. ‘There was a bit of trouble, you know, but they’re still together.’
‘Was there anyone else you recognised who made night time visits?’
‘No, but there were definitely other women. You could hear voices, but they always got into the house without being seen.’
Despite your best efforts, thought Carter.
‘Did he have any other regular visitors?’
‘He didn’t seem to have many friends. I think he did a lot of shady stuff with money. One or two of those caving people dropped in now and again.’
‘Yeah, those hairy blokes who do it underground with a helmet on.’ Gary exploded with laughter at his own joke. This time his partner ignored him.
‘What made you think that Atkins was involved with anything illegal to do with money?’
Carol Anderson pulled back.
‘I don’t know for certain, but it seemed funny to me that Dave seemed to live quite well but he never had a regular job. Where did he get his money from?’
‘I see. Who in particular did you suspect might be involved?’
‘That Geoff Whitaker used to call round quite a lot at one time. He’s a chef at the Red Horse.’
‘Yes, we’ve interviewed him. He found the body.’
‘What?’
‘Yes, so any reason you know of as to why he came to the house regularly?’
‘No, but it was probably dodgy deals of some kind and I’ll bet something went wrong. Remember that time we heard them arguing, Gary?’
Gary was still reluctant to give any information but muttered a grudging ‘Yeah.’
‘When was that?’ asked Carter.
‘It was a few months ago now. Whitaker had been in the house a while, then we heard raised voices. Suddenly the door slammed; I ran to the window and saw him striding off down the lane.’
Again, confirmation of what Trevor Booth had said. Some things were firming up a little. Carter decided he’d got enough information for the moment and was glad to make his escape.
‘Well, thank you for your help. If you think of anything else that might be relevant let us know.’ He handed over his card.
‘I’ll show you out,’ said Carol and they left Gary slumped in the sofa. Carter heard the television being switched on.
Carter was about to walk through the door when he found Carol blocking his way.
‘Nice of you to call round, Sergeant, I hope we’ll see you again sometime.’ She leered over Carter in an unmistakable manner. Close up, the blue of her tattoos was somehow revolting and her perfume was suffocating.
‘Yes, well, thank you again,’ was all he could think of in reply. A terrible image of tangling with all that metal had appeared in his mind and he left the house as swiftly as he could.
In the late afternoon Oldroyd picked Carter up for the journey back to Harrogate.
‘Any luck?’ asked Oldroyd.
Carter held up his well-used notebook. ‘Yes, lots of useful stuff, sir.’
‘OK, jump in. Give me a brief account now and save the detail until we have a case meeting tomorrow. There’s something I want to show you.’
As they drove out of Burnthwaite, Carter looked again with renewed interest at the green landscape with the fields and barns.
‘Why are there so many caves round here then, sir?’
Oldroyd replied eagerly.
‘Because of the rocks beneath us. It’s limestone; carboniferous limestone, to be exact. It’s a pervious rock – water passes through and dissolves it. Over thousands of years the water has carved out the caves.’
Carter remembered all this vaguely from his geography lessons. The problem was that the teacher had sat him next to one of the prettiest girls in the class and he’d spent most of his time trying to chat her up. He strained to remember what he’d learned.
‘Is that where you have those things that hang down? Stalactites or something?’
‘Well done. Stalactites hang from the roof of the cave and stalagmites grow from the floor. They’re both made up of calcite deposits left by dripping water.’
‘That’s it, sir, we used to remember that by thinking “tites” come down, you know, like a girl’s—’
‘I think I’ve got the idea, Andy. You sound a bit laddish in your schooldays.’
‘Oh, I was, sir, a right little sparky character till my dad died. That changed me
.’
‘No wonder,’ said Oldroyd. ‘Anyway, we’ll just stop here.’
Due to the conversation, Carter hadn’t noticed that Oldroyd had taken a different route back. The roadside walls had gone. They were driving on a lonely road across a bare landscape, flattish on either side with low hills rising in the near distance.
Oldroyd drove off the road and stopped on the sheep-cropped grass.
‘Out you get; we’re going for a little walk. This is real limestone country.’
The two men followed a path and Carter noticed that a stream came under the road and continued across the field. The path took them by the stream across smooth green turf cropped close by the sheep that were randomly scattered around.
‘Limestone landscape,’ continued Oldroyd, ‘is both beautiful and strange.’
He said nothing else for a while as they walked towards what appeared to be a narrow gap between the hills.
Carter was aware of the atmosphere changing. He looked up: there were white lines high above but no aircraft noise. The sun was getting low in the sky. The black shape of some kind of bird of prey circled slowly over the hills. They approached the gap.
‘Stop,’ said Oldroyd quietly. ‘Listen. What can you hear?’
Carter listened but could hear nothing except the slight hissing of the wind.
‘Nothing, sir.’
‘Exactly. Wonderful, isn’t it? It’s strange because we’re not used to it. I think it’s something to do with these hills cutting out the noise. You’re in a kind of amphitheatre.’
Carter was used to an environment of constant noise. Silence in London was virtually unobtainable. Even if you went out into the countryside of Kent or Sussex, you were never far from a trunk road or motorway and planes were passing overhead.
‘You also get this kind of effect.’ Oldroyd stopped and turned to the hills.
‘Hello!’ he shouted towards the distant craggy limestone cliff. A second later the clearest echo Carter had ever heard returned eerily over the fields.
‘That’s incredible, sir.’
‘Try it.’
Carter shouted his name, which duly returned to him teasingly, like a child who repeats everything you say.
‘I’ve never heard one like that before.’
Oldroyd smiled archly. ‘By the way,’ he said, ‘what’s happened to the stream?’
Carter had been gazing at the hills and the sky and had forgotten the stream they were following. He looked down only to see that the rocky bed was dry. The water was gone; a substantial stream had completely disappeared!
‘What the . . . ?’
Oldroyd laughed. ‘It’s another limestone trick. It’s disappeared bit by bit down holes into the underground cave system.’
‘This place could give you the creeps,’ said Carter, who was nevertheless absorbing the strange compelling beauty.
‘Just a bit further,’ said Oldroyd.
They entered a dry valley which grew narrower until they were walking down a waterless stream bed that twisted and turned. Carter could imagine the torrent of water that must have once flowed through to create the gorge they were in. Suddenly it opened out and they stepped on to yet another weird landscape. The greyish white limestone was completely exposed and deep fissures had been weathered into it so that it resembled a giant fossilised human brain. This expanse of rock was bare of surface vegetation except for a solitary wind-blown tree growing in the middle of a stone plateau.
‘This is a limestone pavement,’ announced Oldroyd with pride and enthusiasm. ‘Let’s have a quick walk on to it, there are some beautiful ferns growing in these grykes – those are the spaces and . . .’
He stopped abruptly as a sound broke the silence. To their left, a little way up the hillside, was an old drystone wall with a small scree slope below. A stone had fallen off the top of the wall and was rattling down across the rocks below. As Oldroyd glanced up sharply, he caught a brief glimpse of a figure crouching behind the wall.
‘Hold on, Andy,’ Oldroyd said quietly. ‘I think we’re being watched.’
‘Out here, sir?’
‘They could have followed us.’
Carter thought of frantic chases through the crowded streets of the capital and looked around at the empty landscape.
‘How, sir? There’s nowhere to hide.’
‘The walls; there were walls all across those fields parallel to the path. They could have hidden behind them and tracked us. There’s someone over there behind that wall. I saw him duck down quickly when that stone clattered down. Let’s walk over slowly in that direction while we’re talking.’
The detectives walked across the edge of the limestone pavement with assumed nonchalance, but halfway towards the wall Carter stopped.
‘You were right, sir; look, he’s making a run for it.’
A head appeared occasionally above the top of the wall as the figure stooped and ran along the other side.
‘I’ll get after him, sir.’ Carter prepared to run.
‘Don’t bother, Andy, he’s already too far off to catch.’
Carter relaxed again. ‘It could’ve just been someone messing around.’
‘Possibly, but it’s a bit suspicious in the circumstances. A bit of a coincidence: the day we find a body, someone seems to be watching us. Anyway, it’s probably to our advantage for him to think we didn’t see him. We’ll ask Craven to get his people out here and do a search; see if they come up with anything.’
Carter looked across the corrugated plateau of the limestone pavement as the silence re-established itself. The sun had now sunk below the hills and the temperature had dropped. Everything was coloured in austere grey and pallid greens. The smoothness of the fields was broken only by the walls, randomly scattered boulders and the craggy cliffs of exposed limestone on steeper hillsides in the distance. Even Oldroyd seemed to be feeling the strange loneliness as he shuddered slightly and fastened his jacket.
‘Let’s get back,’ he said.
Later that evening, Carter was trying to sort out his new flat although he was feeling tired after his long day. He had brought back a pizza as he had no food in and no time in the day to go to the supermarket.
He was very pleased with his new home. He had a good-sized kitchen, spacious living room and two bedrooms for a rent that was laughably low compared with London, where he’d paid more for a cramped two-roomed flat in Croydon. The flat was just out of the centre of the town and he could walk across the Stray, a wide expanse of green, every morning to West Riding Police HQ. No queues or long journeys on the underground. Life should be much less stressful in some ways at least, although he was still not sure yet how he would adjust to the small-town atmosphere of Harrogate.
He kicked his shoes off and smiled as he saw that they were still mud stained from the walk across the fellside. He stretched himself out on the sofa and thought again about his new boss. He had taken to Oldroyd straight away. He felt comfortable with his unpredictable, teasing style, which he imagined could disconcert others. He had just begun to eat the pizza out of the box when his mobile phone rang.
‘Hey, how’s it going?’ The voice was familiar: Jason Harris, one of his oldest friends. They’d been at school together in Croydon and had played in the same school football teams. Jason was an archetypal laddish extrovert, exuberant and hedonistic. They’d had many memorable nights out together, and those were only the ones he could remember.
When Carter joined the police force, Jason went to the LSE to do a degree in Economics. He was bright but totally idle and enjoyed his time ‘getting pissed for three years with state funding’, as he summed up his time as an undergraduate. His mediocre degree didn’t prevent him from securing a job in a City firm of bank analysts and making rapid progress to a position in which he made substantial amounts of money. He promptly blew it all on cars, drink and women in no particular order.
The fast lifestyle showed no sign of abating as the years went by and he had survived the rec
ent crash in the financial world apparently unscathed. ‘It only got the idiots who didn’t know what they were doing,’ he would say. Carter lived in fear of being on duty one night and having to arrest Jason after he’d been involved in some drunken fracas. He had slowly reduced the amount of time he spent with his riotous friend, whose activities were so potentially at odds with his role as a police officer. In recent times, after his promotions, he’d chosen the nights out even more judiciously and always departed before the excesses of the early hours.
Jason didn’t seem at all offended by Carter’s more sober behaviour. He understood the reasons, but seemed to pity rather than resent Carter’s changed attitude. He was constantly ringing him to say what an amazing time he’d missed, what a boring life it must be as a copper, etc. When Carter had announced that he was moving to Harrogate, Jason was astonished. His ignorance about anywhere outside London was as complete as his lack of interest. The north of England may as well have been Outer Mongolia.
‘Can you understand what they’re saying?’
Carter laughed.
‘Where do you think I am, you daft sod? It’s only two hundred miles away. People don’t have two heads up here.’ He started to tell Jason about the Jingling Pot case, but he soon realised that his friend wasn’t really interested.
‘You missed a great party on Saturday mate: Tony Hammond’s birthday. You know Tony, bit of a lightweight, gets wasted on one JD and Coke. God, was he pissed! We ended up at this house off Mitcham Road. He took all his clothes off and ran out of the door. He’d have been off down the street starkers if we hadn’t stopped him. We hauled him back and threw him in this pond they had in the front garden. That sobered him up a bit. Then he ran round the garden with his dick all covered with waterweed. You should’ve seen it, mate. I haven’t laughed so much in years.’
Carter smiled at this account of a typical piece of Jason high jinks, but it seemed rather a long way from him now, and not only geographically. A part of him was beginning to feel that blokes like him and Jason, pushing thirty, ought not to be behaving as if they were still nineteen or twenty. Perhaps there was something in this notion of maturity. He didn’t say as much to Jason, as the latter would have scoffed at the idea, but he felt a certain distance growing between them.