Death on the Levels

by David Hodges

  Kate waited until she had received the general ‘all clear’ message on her radio from the inspector leading the search team before she and Ferris left the woodshed. They reached the front of the house just as an old Honda Civic rolled up, firing plumes of smoke from its exhaust with every alternate beat of its out-of-tune engine.

  ‘Guv’nor,’ Kate greeted as the short, muscular figure in the overcoat and pork-pie hat climbed out.

  Even from where she was standing, she could smell the stale beer and cigarette smoke off him and she was unsurprised by his non-committal grunt in response. Detective Inspector Ted Roscoe was a good, experienced policeman, but he would never have won any prizes at charm school, and she smiled tightly to herself as she followed him through the front door of the house with Ferris trailing behind, knowing full well from the intelligence they had received where the boss would be heading.

  The basement was two levels down – below another floor that had no doubt originally comprised the servants’ quarters, plus the wine and food stores and the kitchen. Accessed via an arched doorway in the corner of a large, white-tiled room, which had obviously once been the kitchen itself, it was located at the foot of an iron-railed stone staircase, one that plunged steeply between peeling plaster walls into darkness. Their torches revealed a short passageway at the bottom burrowing into the gloom to their left, and the boiler room they were seeking was directly in front of them, its door standing wide open. The plastic bags were stacked neatly inside, close to a massive rusted boiler, and the padlock which seemed to have been used to secure the door skated into the room under the toe of Roscoe’s shoe when he failed to spot it on his approach.

  ‘Must be around half a ton there, guv,’ Kate breathed, studying the plastic bags in the beam of her torch, ‘and if that really is coke, your snout has certainly earned his bread.’

  Roscoe grunted again. ‘It had better be coke,’ he growled. ‘It cost me a bloody big slice of the snouts’ fund.’

  He straightened and turned to Kate. ‘You and Ferris remain here to preserve the scene,’ he said. ‘No one goes in until SOCO arrive. Got that? I’ll get a plod down here to guard this little lot as soon as I can.’

  Then he was gone, a fast-fading spot of light bobbing about in a black void almost in time to the sharp tap of his footsteps on the stone stairs.

  Kate watched the bobbing light until it had disappeared completely, then turned to Ferris.

  ‘Looks like we’ll be here for a while,’ she remarked, repressing a shiver. ‘Hope your thermals are up to it.’

  She heard him sniff.

  ‘Never mind the bloody thermals,’ he said. ‘I just hope the pair who’ve just been nicked don’t have an army of pals who decide to turn up here looking to make a claim.’

  She gave a short laugh, then abruptly swallowed the reply that was on the tip of her tongue and gripped his arm tightly.

  ‘What was that?’ she whispered sharply.

  ‘What was what?’ he retorted.

  She squeezed his arm again and this time he heard it – a scraping sound from somewhere further along the passageway.

  ‘Probably a rat,’ he said, but there was a nervous tremor in his tone. ‘Can’t be anything else – the tactical team checked out the whole place.’

  Kate directed her own torch into the gloom, but saw only bare walls and the gashes of two other doorways.

  ‘Stay here,’ she ordered. ‘I’m going to take a look.’

  ‘What, on your own? Don’t be daft. I’m coming with you.’

  She muttered an oath. ‘You’ll do no such thing, Danny. Someone has to stay here to preserve the scene. I’ll yell if I need you.’

  For all her bravado, Kate felt her stomach muscles knotting as she parted company with her colleague’s reassuring bulk, but she pressed on. More scrapings now and for a moment she froze. She could actually feel the thud of her own heart in the claustrophobic blackness and was conscious of the fact that her mouth had suddenly dried up.

  She checked the first room, which opened off to her left, but she saw nothing save piles of old, broken furniture, a child’s rocking horse, and a stack of tea chests.

  She moved on to the second room, which faced her at the end of the passageway. The door was partially closed and its rusted hinges groaned as she pushed it open. The beam of her torch traced a path across the dirty concrete floor, then over the bare brick walls, picking out a stack of mattresses in the left-hand corner and a couple of iron-framed beds with twisted springs pushed up against the right-hand wall. Then, venturing further into the room, she saw something else – a single mattress, with a couple of blankets dumped in a bundle on top, beside a litter of plastic cups and the remains of what looked like plastic sandwich cartons. There was a strong, rancid smell, like urine, and touching the mattress she found it was soaking wet – no doubt from the water which she could see slowly creeping down the lagging of a broken pipe extending from the ceiling to a horizontal section running along the lower part of the wall.

  She felt her stomach churn. Someone had been using the place as a doss and the scraping sounds she had heard suggested he was still here, lurking somewhere in the darkness. But where?

  A sudden sound behind her and she instinctively spun round, the beam of her torch illuminating a tall figure in a wide-brimmed, trilby-type hat and long, dark overcoat, who had materialized from the darkness on the other side of the door, just feet away.

  ‘And who the hell are you?’ she gasped, her free hand diving for the CS gas spray in her pocket.

  The figure threw up an arm to shield his eyes from the glare of the torch.

  ‘You okay, skip?’ she heard Ferris’ voice call faintly from the far end of the passageway.

  ‘I said, who are you?’ she repeated, still struggling to extricate the gas spray from the lining of her pocket.

  Rimless, gold-coloured glasses blazed back at her in the light of the torch and she glimpsed a thin, pale face, framed by straggly blond hair. Then, to her astonishment, the figure seemed to smile, raising a finger to his lips before suddenly lurching forward and hurling her to one side with a sweep of one powerful arm. She hit the floor with a force that knocked much of the breath out of her body, cracking her head on the concrete in the process, the torch flying from her hand and bouncing away into the gloom.

  As she struggled up on to her knees, senses swimming in a sea of pain, she heard running footsteps and saw the beam of another torch bobbing towards her.

  ‘Skipper?’ Ferris was panting from the exertion when he reached her side.

  ‘Where’d he go?’ she gasped as he hauled her to her feet.

  Ferris spotted her torch, miraculously still lit, lying a few feet away and retrieved it for her.

  ‘Where did who go?’

  She took the torch from him and directed the beam back along the passageway.

  ‘The blond guy. He vanished – just like that.’

  ‘I heard you yell, but I ain’t seen no one.’

  ‘He must have run right past you.’

  ‘Well, I never saw him.’

  She pushed past him, training her torch on the first room she had checked a few moments before. At first, she saw just the same broken furniture she had noted before, but then she became aware of something else – the rocking horse was rising and falling on its base with the creak of its mechanism, as if being rocked by an unseen hand.

  Gritting her teeth, she advanced slowly into the room, the gas spray held out at arm’s length in front of her, but there was no need for caution. The bird had flown and she saw how he had managed it.

  There was a narrow door in the far corner of the room, half hidden by the stack of tea chests. Further investigation revealed a flight of stairs on the other side, which were found to lead to a scullery at the back of the house, behind the kitchen. Moonlight flooded the room through a smashed window, glinting on the shards of broken glass littering the twin draining boards and stone-flagged floor, while the back door hung open at
an angle on one hinge, as if mocking the two detectives as they stumbled into the room.

  Pushing through the open door and climbing another shorter flight of steps, Kate found herself standing in a partially overgrown walled yard, littered with broken roof tiles, lengths of lead guttering, and other debris. It was apparent that the ground at the rear of the house was a lot lower than that at the front, and a wide opening to her right, sporting the remains of a high wooden gate, gave access to a lane bordered on the far side by a rhyne – one of Somerset’s man-made ditches. Predictably, there was no sign of anyone.

  ‘Bastard’s gone,’ Kate said savagely, after striding to the gateway and studying the empty lane.

  ‘Reckon he was part of this business?’ Ferris asked at her elbow. ‘Maybe your feller had been left here by the others to keep an eye on the stash until they could come back to pick it up?’

  Kate shook her head doubtfully. ‘I don’t know. Somehow, I don’t think so. He seemed more like a dosser to me. There’s a mattress and blanket in the basement, which he may have been using.’

  Ferris grunted. ‘Funny the search team didn’t find him when they nicked the other two.’

  She nodded. ‘I suspect he was hiding behind the stack of mattresses in the room where I found him.’

  ‘Mr Roscoe won’t be happy we lost him.’

  She snorted. ‘Mr Roscoe is never happy anyway,’ she retorted angrily, ‘so what’s new?’

  CHAPTER 2

  It was a fact that Detective Inspector Ted Roscoe rarely smiled and, when he did, it looked like a ferocious extension of his usual scowl. With his Stalin-style moustache and bushy eyebrows, the chunky former Marine presented quite a formidable figure, despite his unimpressive stature, and his forceful personality had an intimidating effect on most people who came into contact with him.

  Detective Sergeant Kate Lewis was not one of those people. Her vivid blue eyes and pale, freckled face, framed by a mane of auburn hair, may have turned the heads of most red-blooded males and aroused envy in the hearts of most young women denied the looks she had inherited from her late mother, but a book should never be judged by its cover. Underneath was a resourceful, headstrong and stubborn young woman, who was certainly not afraid to stand up to her scowling, overbearing boss. This did not make for an easy relationship between the two and although, deep down, they shared a mutual respect for each other, neither would ever be prepared to admit to it.

  There was certainly no hint of this mutual respect when Kate returned to Highbridge police station to find her boss slumped behind the desk in his small office.

  ‘So, you’ve let the side down again, eh, Lewis?’ he growled, popping a strip of chewing gum into his mouth after she had told him about the rough sleeper. ‘Let the third member of the gang get clean away?’

  She treated him to a laser-like stare. ‘It wasn’t like that at all, guv, and you know it,’ she retorted. ‘Anyway, I don’t think he was part of the gang. Probably just a dosser who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.’

  ‘What? A dosser wearing a trilby hat? That’ll be a first.’

  ‘We found a mattress, blankets and other evidence of a rough sleeper,’ she went on with exaggerated patience, ‘so it all checks out.’

  ‘He could still have been the watchman, looking after the coke until it was collected.’

  ‘Unlikely, in my opinion.’

  He grunted. ‘Well, that’s all right then, isn’t it? If that’s the opinion of the force’s ace sleuth, Detective Sergeant Kate Lewis, we can all rest easy, can’t we?’

  She flushed angrily. ‘That’s not fair, guv,’ she snapped back. ‘He came out of nowhere and knocked me flat. I cracked my head on the bloody floor too. I could have been seriously injured.’

  ‘Well, you weren’t, were you? What do you want, a flippin’ medal? And anyway, what was Ferris doing while all this was going on? Having a crap?’

  She rose to the bait before she could stop herself. ‘With respect, sir, you are out of order. DC Ferris was guarding the crime scene, as you had instructed, but he came to my assistance as soon as he realized there was a problem.’

  ‘But your man still got away, didn’t he? What did he look like?’

  ‘I didn’t get much of a look at him. I just saw a pale face, glasses, and blondish hair. Anyway, I’ve already circulated what I can remember about him, so maybe someone will pick him up in due course.’

  He gave a disparaging snort. ‘Yeah, and maybe the Tooth Fairy will leave a couple of sovs under my pillow tonight.’

  With a bit of luck, it will be a grenade, she thought grimly. Roscoe sat back in his chair and treated her to a wolfish grin through a wad of chewing gum.

  ‘Go on, Lewis, piss off home and rest that sore head of yours,’ he mocked. ‘Can’t have our top detective suffering brain damage, can we? You can close the door on your way out.’

  And she did – with a slam that rattled the whole office.

  *

  The thatched cottage Kate and Hayden had made their home stood close to the main road on the outskirts of the village of Burtle, within a patchwork of waterlogged fields, criss-crossed by rhynes.

  Kate turned the nose of her Mazda MX5 sports car into the gravel driveway at the side of the cottage at just after midnight and sat there for a few moments after shutting off the engine, stretching her aching muscles. It had been a long night and she was ready for bed.

  Hayden was still up and waiting for her, his good-natured face, framed by a mop of unruly fair hair, wearing a wide grin as she pushed through the front door and dumped her briefcase on the floor beside the telephone table in the living room. Fresh logs spluttered on the open fire and a bottle of red wine and two full glasses stood on the coffee table in front of it.

  ‘Good result, old girl?’ Hayden asked, picking up one of the glasses of wine and holding it out towards her.

  She kicked off her shoes and, shrugging out of her coat, draped it over the back of an armchair.

  ‘Good enough,’ she replied, taking the glass from him and dropping on to the settee where he had obviously been lounging. ‘We nicked two and seized a load of what looked like coke. Unfortunately, one got away, but it’s likely he was just a dosser in the wrong place at the wrong time.’ She eyed him critically. ‘How’s the stomach?’

  His grin faded to a sheepish smile. ‘Oh, a lot better, thanks,’ he said hastily. ‘Must have been nothing more than bad indigestion.’

  She gulped some wine and glanced at the dirty plate lying on the edge of the hearth beside the settee, which bore the remains of what looked to have been a pizza and chips. Still smarting over Roscoe’s remarks and keen to take her anger out on someone, she waved an arm towards the dirty plate.

  ‘And of course, a big doughy pizza and greasy chips were the ideal remedy for that, weren’t they?’ she said with heavy sarcasm.

  He looked embarrassed and tried to avoid her stare.

  ‘Er … well, no, but I got a bit … er … peckish after the indigestion went, so I rang Angelo’s. Nice youngster delivered it on a scooter.’

  She nodded slowly. ‘Was that before or after you’d watched the big match or had started on the red wine?’ she said tightly.

  He glanced at the television screen, then at his glass, but said nothing and she shook her head bitterly.

  ‘You really do take the biscuit, Hayd,’ she went on remorselessly. ‘You should have been on this operation tonight and while you were lounging here in front of the fire – supposedly sick, yet managing to stuff yourself with pizza and watch bloody football – Danny Ferris and I were freezing our tits off in a sodding shed, with just a flask of coffee to keep out the cold.’

  He frowned. ‘That’s not fair, Kate,’ he protested. ‘I really did feel ill when you left for the nick at six. I wasn’t swinging the lead.’

  She snorted. ‘Tell that to the Marines, Hayd, and they’d probably shoot you!’ She stood up, draining her glass. ‘Anyway, I’m going to bed. I’
m knackered and I haven’t the energy to argue the toss with you.’

  She was halfway to the stairs when she turned with a frown of her own, sniffing the air.

  ‘What’s that smell? It’s like perfume.’ She treated him to a hard stare. ‘Had a woman in here, have you, Hayd?’

  His eyes widened and he visibly gulped. ‘Good lord, no,’ he exclaimed indignantly. ‘What sort of person do you think I am? It must have been the pizza girl—’

  ‘Girl?’

  ‘Yes, Jackie I think she said her name was. She … she put the pizza in the kitchen for me.’ He choked for a moment. ‘How can you even think something like that?’

  Her eyes sparkled. She was pleased she had managed to ruffle his feathers. The lying sod deserved it. Poor old Hayden was the most devoted man she had ever met. Eccentric, pompous, overweight and bone idle at times, but unfaithful? Not a chance! He wouldn’t know where to start. But baiting him had certainly helped her get over her bad mood.

  ‘Goodnight, Hayd,’ she said. ‘Don’t forget to wash your dirty dishes before you turn in, will you?’

  CHAPTER 3

  Another of those bad headaches – which had been a curse for so long and were evidently associated with Patient 174’s mental illness, according to Larchfield’s so-called experts – had returned with a vengeance. Without the sedative medication the hospital had supplied to dumb things down, George Lupin had no choice but to lie on the pile of loose hay which almost filled the barn, eyes closed, listening to the world waking up around the old wooden building until, with the aid of a couple of the strong pain-killing tablets stolen from the dead shrink’s medicine cabinet, the pain subsided.