Death on the Levels

by David Hodges

  ‘And where will I find the fourth sister, Iris Naylor?’

  He frowned. ‘Not a clue, I’m afraid. She apparently moved out of the area after she was married – some sort of family disagreement, I believe – and I have no idea where she went. Is it important?’

  Kate released her breath in a pent-up burst. ‘It is, if we are to save her life,’ she replied tightly.

  CHAPTER 13

  ‘So, they were sisters then?’ Roscoe growled, following Kate’s return to the incident room and her report on her interview of the Reverend Glover. ‘Which means we now know the connection between the killer’s two victims, and we also know he could be driving a red VW.’

  He snatched the desk telephone from its cradle. ‘At least that’s something for the troops to be looking for.’

  She held up one hand to check his move. ‘I’ve already circulated the info, guv, so there’s no need.’

  He grunted. ‘You are on the ball today,’ he replied with heavy sarcasm, replacing the phone. ‘I hope you’re going to start making a habit of that.’

  Kate ignored him and turned instead to the DCI sitting behind Roscoe’s treasured desk, unable to conceal her agitation. ‘It now seems obvious that our man is killing his victims one by one,’ she said. ‘First Elsie Norman, then Mabel Strong and, as the Grim Reaper got to Beatrix James first, Iris Naylor will be next.’

  Deidrie Hennessey nodded grimly. ‘And we have no idea where this Iris Naylor is right now?’

  Kate shook her head. ‘I checked the church records with Reverend Glover and discovered she was married to a man by the name of James Edward Naylor, but according to the vicar, who knew the other three sisters well, it seems that after living in Cheddar for a while, there was a big family row and she left the area for heaven knows where.’

  ‘What about this man, Naylor? If he has surviving family, they might know where the couple went.’

  Kate shook her head. ‘Checked that too. Naylor was an only child and both his parents are long since dead.’

  ‘John Quigley or any of the sisters have kids?’

  ‘Only daughters, according to the Reverend Glover.’

  ‘Brilliant,’ Roscoe growled. ‘So, apart from this VW and the family link between our two victims, all we’ve been able to establish for definite is what the pathologist told me at the PM today – in short, that Elsie Norman died from a combination of manual strangulation and a broken neck. The doc was also able to say that she had ingested a substantial amount of sherry before death, so the bastard obviously did force it down her throat. Apparently, she was probably dead before the killer finished choking her.’

  ‘Any luck on the CCTV at the hospital regarding Mabel Strong?’ Kate put in.

  He shook his head. ‘We’ve got a hazy pic of some tall bloke, walking through the hospital’s main doors. He might or might not be our man, but his face is obscured by a folded newspaper he’s holding up in front of him as he’s passing through. All we know is that he’s wearing a dark, thigh-length coat of some sort, and it’s possible he is bald. Pic is of very poor quality – about time the hospital got some better kit.’

  ‘So, nothing for us to go on?’ Hennessey said.

  Roscoe shrugged. ‘All we can hope for is that Naylor picks up the murder of her sisters in the press and contacts us on the number we’ve already put out.’

  Hennessey shook her head. ‘Even if she sees the story, she’s unlikely to appreciate the murdered women are her sisters. We cannot confirm the identities of our victims until formal identification has been made, but I’ve already got one of the other inquiry teams working on the job of trying to trace relatives as we speak.’

  ‘Everyone knows who the old biddies are anyway,’ Roscoe commented sourly.

  The DCI frowned. ‘Maybe they do, Ted, but it’s a matter of procedure, as you are well aware. We need official ID first before we can officially release the names, and we have an agreement with the media that they will not publish the names of victims until that confirmation is given.’

  ‘And meanwhile we’ve got another potential victim due for the chop, while we just sit here on our bleedin’ arses?’

  Hennessey’s eyes hardened. ‘We follow procedure, Inspector, is that clear?’

  ‘Crystal,’ Roscoe muttered. ‘But it stinks.’

  Hennessey overlooked the remark and studied Kate fixedly. ‘Keep at it anyway, Sergeant. See if you can find a way of tracing her. But on another matter, how are we getting on with the journalist who reported on the Talbot Court sex abuse case?’

  Kate felt her stomach muscles tighten. Bloody Hayden, she thought. Still nothing from him. Too busy chasing skirt.

  ‘DC Lewis has been working on that, ma’am,’ she said blithely. ‘I am seeing him later for a full progress report.’

  Hennessey continued to stare at her for a moment, as if trying to make up her mind about something. But as Kate inwardly squirmed under her gaze, sensing that the DCI suspected she was feeding her a line and was about to follow up with further embarrassing questions she couldn’t answer, the telephone shrilled urgently.

  ‘Yeah,’ Roscoe barked into the mouthpiece, then noticeably stiffened, adding, ‘Got it. On my way.’

  He slammed the phone back on its cradle. ‘Control room,’ he snapped, grabbing his pork-pie hat from the corner of the desk. ‘Plods have found a car dumped in a lake on the Levels.’ His eyes gleamed. ‘A red VW Beetle.’

  *

  The Volkswagen was already out of the water and being loaded on to a low-loader when Roscoe and Kate arrived on the scene. A couple of uniformed Traffic officers were standing by their patrol car, watching the operation with mild interest and one, a woman inspector, extricated her once shiny shoes from the mud of the lake shore and met them halfway up the steep slope leading to the main road.

  ‘Couple of walkers saw part of the roof just below the surface,’ she explained, ‘and reported it on one of their mobile phones.’

  She glanced back at the car and grinned. ‘Don’t know why anyone would want to nick a heap like that anyway.’

  ‘Maybe just a psychopathic killer,’ Roscoe retorted drily.

  The inspector was obviously taken aback by his comment. ‘Control never said,’ she responded apologetically. ‘They just told us to wait here when we called it in.’

  Roscoe stuffed some chewing gum into his mouth and began chewing, his eyes darting quickly over the scene, missing nothing. ‘RO check?’ he continued.

  The inspector nodded and produced her pocket book, flicking to the back page. ‘A Dr Emrys Jones,’ she said. ‘Address up north. But no report of it being stolen.’

  Kate quickly took down the information in her own pocket book. ‘Thanks,’ she said. ‘We’ll have the address checked out.’

  ‘No need,’ the inspector replied. ‘I’ve already asked the control room to contact the relevant force and get someone round to see the owner—’

  ‘Walkers see anything or anyone?’ Roscoe cut in.

  The other shook her head. ‘No, just the bit of roof sticking out of the water. The car was probably dumped there a while ago.’

  ‘Anything interesting in it?’ Kate asked.

  The inspector grinned again. ‘Well, no stiffs, if that’s what you were thinking, but we haven’t gone over it thoroughly yet. We’ll do that when we get it back to the garage.’

  Kate nodded. ‘I’ll take a quick look now,’ she said, seeing that the car had been fully loaded on to the truck.

  ‘Your prerogative, but you’ll find it a bit wet.’

  Wet was not the word for it. The car was still streaming with water when Kate climbed up on to the trailer, and a glance through a window told her that a search, even a cursory one, was out of the question until it had had a chance of drying out.

  ‘Satisfied?’ the inspector asked with another grin when Kate returned to where she and Roscoe were still standing.

  ‘Well, we have the car,’ Kate replied grimly, her gaze roving around t
he lake and the sparse woodland on the far side. ‘But that’s a long way from finding its former driver.’

  *

  George had a problem and it was Iris Naylor. So far everything had gone more or less according to plan. Two of the lesser harridans had been dispatched – although the premature demise of Beatrix James had been a big disappointment – and there was just one more to go. The most important of the odious quartet. The trouble was, that particular one was Iris Naylor and she had long since vanished into the blue, apparently leaving no forwarding address. Even Elsie had claimed she’d no idea where her sister could have gone. Big family bust-up apparently many years before. Maybe Iris was already dead, just like Beatrix, or had gone to live abroad – bloody hell, hopefully not! But wherever it was she had disappeared to, finding her looked like being a real challenge and George was only too painfully aware that there wasn’t much time left to finish things before the Grim Reaper came for the very person who had been helping him increase his quota of departed souls.

  Sitting at the kitchen table of the farmhouse that had now been so permanently ‘vacated’ by the previous owners, Patient 174 tried to work out how Iris Naylor could be traced. Making even discreet inquiries at such places as the local church or county rating office was out of the question, as that would almost certainly arouse unwanted curiosity and could ultimately lead to police interest. No, there had to be another way of doing things that could be achieved quietly and unobtrusively – but what? That was the point.

  Think, think, think. There had to be a way. Father always used to say that there was a solution to every problem. It just needed to be teased out of the old grey matter. George’s face twisted into a malevolent sneer at the thought of the cold-hearted religious freak who had made one innocent child’s life such a total misery. All well and good for Daddy to come out with one of his pearls of wisdom, but there again, that evil bastard had had a lot to say about everything, and most of it had been pure crap anyway.

  George poured another glass of whisky from the bottle that had been left on the Welsh dresser by the late farmer and sipped from it thoughtfully, trying hard to shut out the sound of the dog in one of the sheds outside, barking its head off. In the absence of any brilliant ideas, there was only one course of action that could be taken – a bit of old-fashioned burglary. Maybe somewhere in either Elsie Norman or Mabel Strong’s bungalow there was an address or telephone number of the estranged sister. It was risky returning to either of the crime scenes and certainly very much of a long shot that it would turn anything up, but what other option was there?

  Downing the whisky, George glanced out of the window and then at the watch on his wrist. It would be a few hours before it was dark, which was the best time for nefarious operations like this. But there was no rush, and in the meantime, that dratted barking dog could be dealt with once and for all. The psychopath smiled mercilessly at the thought and threw a glance at the double-barrelled 12-bore shotgun on the hooks above the range cooker before pouring yet another whisky in the lead crystal glass.

  *

  Kate tracked down Hayden to the office of the Local Intelligence Officer. The LIO was out and she cornered her husband before he could leave, determined to have it out with him.

  ‘I want a word with you, Hayd,’ she said.

  To her surprise he simply shrugged. ‘I know you do,’ he said, ‘but not now.’

  ‘What do you mean not now?’

  He thrust an A4 sheet of paper under her nose. ‘I’ve traced Leslie Brookes, the reporter, but it’s a fair distance from here.’

  Thrown by this new development, Kate hesitated for a second, then snatched the piece of paper and glanced at the hastily scribbled notes.

  ‘Minehead?’ she said.

  He nodded. ‘I said it was a fair distance from here – around an hour from Highbridge by my reckoning.’

  ‘Byways?’

  ‘I gather it’s a residential home.’

  ‘He’s in a home?’

  ‘Apparently so. Alzheimer’s, it seems.’

  ‘Damn! Then he’ll be no good to us.’

  ‘I’m told it’s in the early stages.’

  ‘Who told you that?’

  ‘It’s a long story. I’ve been through so many people, but I finally managed to get hold of an ex-colleague of his, who gave me the SP.’

  ‘That will get the noses of half of Fleet Street twitching.’

  He shook his head. ‘It won’t. I was very discreet. Said I was an independent hack following up on an old story he did about the floods on the Somerset Levels. Pretty boring stuff.’

  ‘Good work.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  Kate took a deep breath, all thoughts of tackling Hayden about his ‘other woman’ temporarily dismissed from her mind.

  ‘I’ll drive,’ she said, ‘but we’d better let the guv’nor know where we’re going first.’

  CHAPTER 14

  Byways was a big, white building, sitting grandly among neat landscaped gardens in a side street not far from Minehead’s railway station. Kate pulled up in the car park, tense and irritable.

  Forced to use her own car to get to the hospital, then claim back the mileage costs later as no CID pool car had been available, she had found the tight squeeze sitting alongside Hayden in the limited confines of the Mazda MX5 particularly awkward, to say the least, and for the first half hour not a word was spoken by either of them. Then quite suddenly both Kate and Hayden tried to break through the tense atmosphere at the same time with blurted comments that they failed to finish, putting paid to any further conversation for a while longer.

  Kate finally managed to open things up again as they were passing Dunster Castle.

  ‘I wanted to talk to you about us,’ she said as she braked for a slow-moving car in front, which suddenly chose to turn left towards the town at the last minute, without a signal.

  ‘There’s nothing to talk about,’ Hayden replied.

  She cast him a sideways glance as she accelerated away. ‘We have to,’ she said. ‘I want to know what’s going on.’

  ‘Nothing is going on – nothing for you to worry about anyway.’

  ‘That’s not good enough.’

  ‘It’s going to have to do until I can sort things out.’

  ‘What things?’

  ‘I’m not able to say.’

  Kate lost her cool completely. ‘Not able to—?’ she ejaculated without finishing the sentence and swerving as she glared across at him. ‘I’m your bloody wife!’

  ‘Would you mind keeping your eyes on the road, old girl?’ he said, tensing in his seat. ‘I’d like to get to Minehead in one piece.’

  ‘I want to know who you are shagging, Hayd,’ she persisted in a tone pent-up with emotion and once more swerved slightly in the road.

  A car coming the other way blasted them and Hayden gripped the edges of his seat with both hands.

  ‘I wish you weren’t so crude,’ he said. ‘It’s totally unnecessary.’

  ‘Don’t change the subject, Hayd. You’re seeing someone behind my back and I want to know who it is.’

  ‘It’s not what you think.’

  ‘Then what is it?’

  ‘I can’t go into it just now.’

  ‘Then you can find somewhere else to sleep tonight until you decide to go into it. I don’t want you anywhere near me.’

  ‘It’s my cottage.’

  ‘Okay, then I’ll find somewhere else to sleep, you moron. Maybe I’ll pick up some guy with a nice flat.’

  ‘Now you’re being stupid. You’ve simply put two and two together and made five.’

  She swung into a layby and hauled on the handbrake.

  ‘Have I? Then correct my arithmetic by telling me the truth.’

  He stared straight ahead through the windscreen, avoiding her gaze. ‘I can’t tell you anything just now, but you’ve got it all wrong.’

  It was on the tip of her tongue to tell him she had found out about the girl in the Loft H
otel, but she thought better of it.

  ‘I found lipstick on your shirt collar and the thing reeked of perfume,’ she accused. ‘I also got a phone call from some little bitch asking for you – what am I expected to think?’

  He took a deep breath. ‘You have to trust me, that’s all.’

  She gave a shaky, humourless laugh. ‘Oh, that’s what I’ve got to do, is it, just trust you?’

  ‘Why wouldn’t you?’

  ‘You mean why the bloody hell would I?’

  She slammed the car into gear and pulled away with a shriek of tyres, but Hayden made no further comment. He was too terrified by her driving to say anything.

  A smiling carer in a neat blue uniform met them in the foyer of Byways with the usual ‘Can I help you?’ approach and five minutes later they were in the expansive lounge, being guided to a winged armchair by the window with the warning that ‘Poor old Les’ was in the early stages of Alzheimer’s and ‘apt to wander mentally’.

  The elderly man in the slightly rumpled cardigan and grey flannels put down his cup of tea on the chair arm to peer up at them as they approached and frowned when the carer swung two smaller chairs round to face him.

  ‘Couple of police officers to see you, Les,’ she said and, nodding to the two detectives, walked briskly away as they sat down.

  Kate found herself studying a pale, lined face with watery blue eyes that met her gaze curiously from under a mop of thinning grey hair.

  ‘Police?’ Brookes asked in a soft voice, smoothing his small moustache with the index finger of one hand. ‘Well, you’ve finally got me.’ He held out his thin wrists in front of them. ‘Just put the bracelets on.’

  Kate smiled back. ‘We’ll let you off this time, Mr Brookes,’ she said, humouring him. ‘But don’t do it again.’

  ‘Don’t do it ag … don’t do it again?’ he chortled as he reached for his cup with one trembling hand and took a noisy sip. ‘That’s classic.’

  Then he set his cup back on the chair arm, suddenly curious. ‘So, how can I help you, Miss … er—.’