‘It was the barbaric-looking contraption – from the collection of weapons and armour at the entrance?’
‘As far as we can tell.’
She frowns self-reprovingly.
‘I didn’t even notice it were missing.’
‘When were you last in there?’
‘Yesterday – I came out that way, I often do – about a quarter to five – I like to get Kieran’s tea on for five – he’s always starving, ravenous if he’s done sport.’
‘If the trap wasn’t there – wouldn’t you have noticed? You must know the household contents better than their insurers.’
She grins ruefully.
‘Aye – I know what you mean. Happen I would have noticed. But I couldn’t swear – it’s always quite dark.’
‘Who uses the front door – evening times?’
Now she shakes her head.
‘I’m not often around after five. But I don’t think there’s much foot traffic at night. During the day the family mainly uses the scullery door at the back – that’s the quickest way to the office and most of the estate buildings – plus the stables, and the cars are garaged beyond there. Regular deliveries and whatnot – they know to continue past to the estate office. It’s probably only if a visitor comes that someone would go to the front.’
Skelgill nods pensively. But he decides not to speculate. Instead, abruptly, and perhaps too bluntly he changes the subject.
‘Does the pocket rocket miss his dad?’
‘Well – he’s got –’ Her response is something of a reflex – in part the maternal protectiveness that he might have anticipated – but also there is perhaps a revision of something she was about to utter. ‘Me – I do my best – and there’s young guys in the karate club – and a couple of the coaches – they’re good role models and they spend time with him – and one of his best pals, his dad is big into sport – they sometimes travel together – we split the lifts where we can.’
Skelgill does not say anything in response. If he dangled bait she was not interested. In his judgement she has turned tail and muddied the waters. But he is always alert to what folk don’t say.
He looks on admiringly at the Duracell boy, now performing competent backflips. But he glances at his watch. His phone is off and his sergeants probably won’t know where to look for him. He finishes his drink and puts down the mug with an air of finality. He pre-empts her actions.
‘Don’t get up – keep your eye on the bairn. Thanks for tea – that filled a gap. I’ll know where to come next time.’
She rewards him with the same enigmatic smile as on their first encounter a couple of weeks ago; strangely, he feels a little guilty.
As soon as Skelgill has disappeared around the side of the building, the boy vaults from the trampoline and runs across to his mother.
‘Well done, Kieran – now you carry on – practise your Gedan Mawashi Geri on the grass.’
She rises and hurries inside without taking the plates.
Meanwhile, maybe fifteen yards from the front of the cottage, Skelgill has turned and is surveying the property, hands on hips.
11. THE BELVEDERE
Tuesday, early evening
‘Leyton – where are you?’
‘We’re waiting in my motor, Guv – where I left it.’ There is a moment’s hesitation, as though, unseen by Skelgill, he refers to his fellow sergeant. ‘We thought you might want to go for something to eat?’
‘Nay, I’m not hungry, Leyton – I’m at the viewpoint by the red phone box – under the pagoda thing. There’s seats here and no one earwigging. You pair come over here so we can catch up.’
Skelgill hears a sigh of resignation.
‘Roger, Guv – I’ll drive us round to the nearest point. Just be two ticks.’
Though it is approaching eight p.m. rich sunshine still filters through the trees; there remain a couple of hours of daylight, and the avian evensong is just getting going; blackbird and robin melodies, tenor and treble respectively; the saxophonic coo of a cushat; and the erratic timekeeping of a chiffchaff.
From the belvedere Skelgill has a clear view over the waterfall that supplies Troutmere; the lake surface simultaneously flat and contoured, as it reflects its surroundings. The rustic boathouse basks in the rosy glow of the sun, the balcony half in shadow.
As he contemplates the unmoving scene – the colours are vivid like an acrylic painting – his thoughts drift back to last night – to midnight – a contrast in monochrome – when the French windows were fleetingly ajar and he caught a snatch of a female voice – distinctly female – but otherwise indeterminate. He tries to replay the tone, the timbre – and he listens for the echoes of those other voices he has heard in the past twenty-four hours.
One of them is not coming clean.
‘Wow!’
Skelgill is jolted from his brown study – he jerks around.
‘What a vista – imagine having this in your garden, Guv.’
It is DS Jones – she approaches energetically across the short turf, in which she seems to leave no impression – whereas coming behind her, labouring to catch up, Skelgill can see that DS Leyton makes bruised footprints.
But her bright ebullience becomes tarnished – it can only be that he regards her with such a strange intensity. DS Leyton, oblivious, chimes in with an apologetic complaint.
‘We tried calling you, Guv – seemed like your mobile was off.’
Skelgill transfers his gaze from DS Jones.
‘Aye – I’ve had no signal.’ He cocks his head briefly to one side. ‘I had to ring you from that box.’
DS Leyton looks flabbergasted.
‘What – is it working?’
‘And I reversed the charges.’
Skelgill waves a dismissive hand and makes a scoffing exclamation. It is sufficient for his sergeant to realise it is a kind of wind up.
‘Ha-hah – you had me going there, Guv. Mind you – this place is bonkers – I wouldn’t put it past the Bullingdons to have had it connected up.’
Skelgill is seated in a timber chair fashioned in the Adirondack style, and there are four others, two either side, ranged in a crescent beneath the roof of the belvedere, around a woodstove and all giving views of the lake. His subordinates seem unsure for a moment of where to settle, but DS Jones grasps the nettle and sits right beside him – she makes a little cry of surprise as the unanticipated declination throws up her knees. But, as DS Leyton, with a groan, and in a more circumspect fashion lowers himself into the seat next to her, she shifts into work mode.
‘The yellow car, Guv.’ (Skelgill’s attention is immediately won.) ‘The Volkswagen Golf – it’s a pool car – they all use it, including members of staff. It’s just left parked in a big open-sided barn behind the stables, unlocked, with the keys in. First come first served. Julian Bullingdon says he didn’t drive it at all yesterday. His moth trap has been set up since Friday – and last night he walked there and back – it takes about twenty-five minutes each way. He was on site from about nine-thirty until around one a.m. When he got back he went into the library to look up a moth in a textbook – he noticed the clock chime the half hour, one-thirty.’
‘How did he get in?’
‘He says he left the back door on the latch – and it was still unlocked when he returned. He wakes Cook if necessary by throwing gravel at her bedroom window.’
Skelgill realises he has omitted to ask the sixty-four thousand dollar question.
‘What about the gunshot?’
DS Jones inhales sharply, as if to acknowledge the significance of this point.
‘He didn’t hear anything.’ She glances sideways at Skelgill in time to catch a suppressed grimace. She is ready for this. ‘But, actually, Guv – that might tell us something. I got him to refuel the generator that runs the moth trap. When you’re beside it, it’s noisy. I doubt if you’d hear a gun until you were some distance away. If he left the moth trap at one a.m. – that suggests the shot had
already been fired. Otherwise, walking back, he probably would have heard it. Plus it fits – with your sighting – of the car.’
She is reticent with these last few words – it seems an awkward moment – she glances a little guiltily at DS Leyton. He comes to her rescue.
‘I managed to winkle that bit out of her, Guv. Neat bit of surveillance on your part.’
Skelgill scowls – but lets it pass over. Plainly they need to share this information – he just hadn’t got round to it, the car still troubling him. Meanwhile DS Jones draws the conclusion from her narrative.
‘If Julian Bullingdon is telling the truth – then it potentially narrows down the time of the shooting to between twelve-forty and one a.m.’
Skelgill, however, is looking discomfited. It feels to him like they are hunting a wraith across the open moor – their torches flashing here and there – but when they close on their quarry and their beams converge, a disembodied shadow rises and flees into the night.
After a while he folds his arms and intones somewhat monotonously.
‘What did he say about the Golf – who might have been using it?’
‘That he had no idea, Guv.’
‘And did he look like he had no idea?’
‘He seemed plausible, but –’ She looks earnestly – first at DS Leyton and then back to Skelgill. ‘But – who should we believe at present?’
This is the very sentiment that has been dogging Skelgill for some time, probably since his very first brush with anything to do with Shuteham Hall – Lawrence Melling, after the shooting of the buzzard in Bullmire Wood. It is as if the very nature of the place – its isolation, its privacy, its lack of security – is engineered to inhibit tangible evidence, and its inhabitants on a spectrum between the guilelessly obtuse and the downright evasive. It fosters conjecture, and DS Leyton duly obliges.
‘If that motor was sitting with its keys in the ignition – behind the stables – it could just as easy have been one or more of the estate workers took it – Artur, included. We’ve only got their word that they resumed their card school. If Melling put their backs up they might have decided to give him a taste of his own medicine. Especially seeing as they’d been caning the vodka.’
Skelgill can immediately think of a welter of objections – such as knowing where Melling was going, getting ahead of him, placing the trap – but he does not even want to get drawn into this journey; without map or compass; the terrain crisscrossed by unmarked lanes, where each wrong turn compounds the disorientation; eventually to encounter the inevitable straw-chewing yokel. “You can’t get there from here.” He exhales and pushes his hands into the air as if he is trying to beat away an onslaught of midges.
‘Leyton – leave it alone.’
DS Leyton, however, is only marginally deterred; perhaps a hankering for his deferred dinner galvanises his resolve.
‘Are you sure it was a yellow motor, Guv? White can look like yellow in the dark – and white’s much more common. Must be fifty to one against.’
Skelgill glowers. It was a fleeting glance in the moonlight – and it would be easy now for doubt to creep in. But he trusts his instincts – he knows from fishing that first impressions are invariably right. A bite has a dynamic quality that is lacking in a snag on rock or weed. But when he does not answer DS Leyton persists.
‘Did you get a butcher’s at the driver, Guv – any passengers?’
Skelgill objects less to this question. He shakes his head.
‘I’d just switched off my beam so I didn’t blind an owl and run it over.’ He sees that his colleagues are looking at him with some distrust. ‘Straight up – it went after a big moth that was thrown by my lights. There was a three-quarter moon and I saw a yellow hatchback flash across the end of the track. But I didn’t get the make.’
There ensues a silence. Clearly, Skelgill has not yet updated his subordinates – regarding Miranda Bullingdon and Karen Williamson. Likewise DS Leyton – who to his chagrin was despatched by Skelgill to see Cook and the estate workers. Skelgill seems in no hurry to hear about the latter. DS Jones, on the other hand, is itching to progress. She fashions a question that tackles her dilemma in a suitably roundabout way.
‘Given what we’ve all learned – can we eliminate anyone?’
But Skelgill does not answer. He gazes out over the lake – perhaps he gives a slight shake of his head – most likely it is frustration.
DS Leyton holds up an index finger.
‘Cook.’
Skelgill swings round as if to challenge his pronouncement.
‘She’s in her late seventies, Guv – she’s waiting for a new hip – she moves at a snail’s pace. She could barely lift a ladle – let alone that there cast-iron mantrap.’
DS Leyton looks like he could come up with more reasons – but Skelgill makes a face of acquiescence. And he poses a constructive question.
‘Did she hear Lord Bullingdon locking up – like he reckoned, he called out to her just before ten?’
DS Leyton shakes his head.
‘She’s a bit mutton, Guv.’
‘What?’
‘Mutt and Jeff – deaf, Guv.’
Skelgill scowls and DS Leyton grins sheepishly. But he has something to add.
‘Funnily enough she said she was cooking a lamb hotpot – leaving it on overnight. She nipped out to the kitchen garden for rosemary – about twenty past ten. She swears she locked the door when she came back in.’
DS Jones homes in on this.
‘That’s two people who claim they locked the back door after Julian Bullingdon left it open – at maybe nine-thirty. Yet he maintains it was unlocked when he got home at just before one-thirty.’
Skelgill, who has his own slant on this, finds himself making a suggestion. ‘Happen Cook forgot. She would have put it on the sneck so she didn’t lock herself out.’ It is not the only explanation that he can think of, but perhaps it suits him since it sounds the most logical.
DS Leyton looks like this is a distinct possibility; he makes a hand gesture that suggests he will not defend the elderly retainer’s waning faculties.
Following another period of silence DS Jones picks up her point about elimination.
‘What about the Irish pair, Guv – if they were in the birdwatching hide as you were leaving – they couldn’t have been in two places at one time?’
Skelgill instinctively glances at his watch – perhaps it is the prospect of shortly being able to interview the couple. But a frown reveals some unease. He did not actually look in the hide. He only went by the noises that were emanating from within. And it was almost one a.m. If Lawrence Melling was shot as early as twelve-forty – then, it would be tight, but “two places at one time” would no longer apply. His words come out somewhat hoarsely.
‘We’ll see what they’ve got to say for themselves at ten.’
Yet suddenly he rises and looks like he is ready to go – despite that it could be at least two hours before the Irish couple turn up for their shift. His colleagues regard him questioningly. DS Leyton rattles his car keys.
‘What do you want to do, Guv?’
‘Reckon I’d better check on old Mary Ann.’
‘Come again?’
‘She’s me Ma’s eldest sister, one of the mad Grahams – she lives just along from the brewery. I drop in every so often.’
His subordinates might not think this to be such an act of altruism if they knew that the ‘mad aunt’ can be relied upon to have some local dish or other simmering on the hob.
‘I’ll see the Irish. You pair can knock off. If you could just drop us back, first.’ Skelgill sees that DS Leyton is looking a little relieved, despite the detour – though DS Jones is plainly less enthusiastic about the prospect. However, before she can object, he issues further instructions, addressing her directly. ‘See if you can put some wheels in motion tonight – submit a request for a search tomorrow – including a blood dog – not just the crime scene, but the various propertie
s that Melling or his assailant might have used – the gatehouse, the boathouse, Melling’s cottage, the stables area, the rearing sheds, the VW Golf – think it through.’
DS Jones is at least engaged by this prospect; her eyes narrow; clearly she is thinking it through.
‘You know, really, Guv – we’d want to check the footwear and clothing of – well – everyone we can think of – for possible blood spatter?’
DS Leyton is looking a bit wide-eyed. Skelgill is looking grim. But he nods.
‘It’s not going to happen – not just yet – turning the place upside down and going through their wardrobes?’ He makes a frustrated growl. ‘Besides – if Helen Back’s right about the way he was shot, we’ll be lucky if we get any blood spatter. But what you can do is put pressure on Forensics. Email them tonight and get on to them first thing. If there’s anything on the gun or the trap, we need to know. Tell them it’s a matter of life and death.’
Now his colleagues look shocked. It is not a phrase he will use glibly; moreover, he says it with such unusual resolve that DS Leyton is prompted to ask for clarification.
‘What are you saying, Guv – you reckon someone else is at risk?’
Skelgill glares at his subordinate.
‘Leyton – we’ve got a killer on the loose – who may be in hiding – and if he’s not, we may have a double killer on the loose. Until we understand why Melling was shot, it’s like blind man’s buff. All these folk playing the game – and we’re half in the dark. But one of them might be a witness and not realise it. One of them might be next.’ He holds out his upturned palms in a more conciliatory gesture. ‘Look – if Melling had been shot, the jewels had been nicked and Stan had disappeared – in that order – I might be thinking, no problem – we know who’s done it and he’s flown the coop. But, right now, we can’t take any chances.’
He beckons with his head and sets off towards the driveway, following the line of his colleagues’ arrival. As his sergeants catch up, DS Jones has a point to convey.
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