by Granger, Ann
‘He didn’t say a lot. Your uncle is quite tough, Tansy. I don’t think my visits worry him. He doesn’t appear worried by the idea of someone using the house. As you were saying, someone could have been upstairs while he was downstairs. Or, if he’d come back early, he could have met up with whoever it is, any sort of mishap like that. Perhaps he hasn’t quite thought it out that far yet.’
They had reached the gate again and Tansy took out the car keys.
‘Taking your mother’s car?’ Jess asked.
‘No, my old wreck.’ She pointed.
Jess looked in that direction and saw an elderly Ford Fiesta parked by some bushes.
‘Dad wants me to buy a new one. But I’m sort of attached to that one.’
‘Your first car?’ Jess smiled, Tansy’s words sparking a memory.
‘That’s right. I’ll drive carefully,’ Tansy said. ‘Honestly.’
Phil Morton was driving carefully, too, down Toby’s Gutter Lane from the Colleys’ towards Sneddon’s Farm. The surface of the lane became progressively more potholed and narrow with hedges or stone walls to either side. If he met an approaching vehicle, one of them would have to back up or pull over awkwardly into the entry to a field for safety. He was also getting nearer to Shooter’s Wood. It loomed darkly ahead, both beckoning with its mystery and repelling at the same time.
He reached a track off to the left. A wooden signpost indicated it led to the farm. On the corner stood the ruins of a tiny cottage, roof collapsed, foliage sticking through the frameless windows and the shell of an old privy standing like a lonely sentry guarding the jungle of a former back garden.
Toby’s Gutter Lane itself ran directly on towards a bend and the woods. Eventually, he supposed, via links with other lanes zigzagging across the landscape, a traveller would reach a main road. But it would be a slow and hazardous route. He understood why motorists who mistakenly turned down Toby’s Gutter Lane were advised by the inhabitants to go back to the main road and not try to cut across country. He turned into the track past the sad ruin of the cottage, wondering if this heralded what he’d find ahead.
However the farm, when he reached it, presented a neater, far more prosperous scene. The house was a rambling but well kept old building of mellow local stone. Geraniums still bloomed in pots by the front door. The outbuildings were well maintained and there were no penned guard dogs, he was relieved to see. But as he got out of his car, a black and white Welsh collie ran round the corner of a barn and came towards him, barking, but wagging its tail at the same time.
‘Hello,’ said Morton to the sheepdog. He reached out his hand for the animal to sniff.
The collie stretched its nose and then looked up at him, panting happily.
‘Where’s your boss, then?’ asked Morton. Generally he liked dogs, and they liked him. This was an honest working dog and he respected that.
The Colley dogs, on the other hand, were of a type familiar to him from breakers’ yards, scrap metal dealers’ premises and various undertakings not keen to have outsiders taking an interest. Such dogs, like their owners, usually had an unfailing nose for the law and regarded it as the enemy.
A man had appeared, tall, slightly stooped, with long, sinewy arms, and a flat cap atop thick greying hair. He stood in silence, watching Morton and the collie.
He’s judging me by the dog’s attitude to me, thought Morton. If the dog decides I’m a friend, so will the owner.
‘Mr Sneddon?’ he called out.
Sneddon came towards him. ‘You a copper?’
Even out here, they knew the law when it appeared.
‘Yes,’ admitted Morton, producing his ID.
Sneddon barely glanced at it. ‘You didn’t look like a lost motorist. We get ’em from time to time. They think they can get across country, but it’s better for them to turn back.’
‘So I gather,’ Morton said. ‘One of the Colleys was telling me that.’
He was interested to see how Sneddon reacted to the name of his neighbours. The farmer eyed him again and then commented, ‘Been there, have you?’ He might or might not have been amused at the idea. It was hard to tell. But his mouth twitched as if he repressed a smile.
‘We’re making enquiries,’ Morton told him, ‘relating to a dead body found at Balaclava House yesterday. You’ve heard about it, I suppose?’
There was a chance that Sneddon hadn’t if he’d been on his own land for the past twenty-four hours.
‘My wife heard about it,’ Sneddon said. ‘And she came and told me.’
‘Oh? Who told her?’ asked Morton.
‘She took her car down to Seb Pascal’s petrol station, on the main road, to fill up. Seb had seen the police cars go by. Later on, he saw a little blue sports job go past with old Monty Bickerstaffe sitting in the passenger seat, and a woman driving. He reckoned the woman was Mr Monty’s niece. So he picked up the phone and rang one of the Colleys, young Gary. Seb reckoned they’d know what was going on. They did.’
Morton thought about this, working out the timetable in his head. ‘It was after Mrs Harwell left with Bickerstaffe?’
‘It’s what I said.’
I’ll have to talk to this Seb Pascal, thought Morton. Seems to me those ruddy Colleys were creeping about all over the landscape, spying on us at Balaclava House and spreading the news. And how did Gary . . . ? His thoughts were interrupted by Sneddon.
‘I was all set to ring you lot myself this morning,’ Sneddon said in a growl. ‘Not you, exactly. You’ll be CID, I suppose. I was going to phone the local cops. Not that it would have done me any good.’
‘Oh?’ Morton asked sharply. ‘Why was that?’
‘Because they’d have sent a bloke out who’d have taken a look, made a note of it, and then done nothing, most likely.’
‘Note of what? What has happened?’ Morton was getting exasperated. ‘What led you to think about calling the police?’
‘I heard a car being driven past my farm last night, very late it was. It was coming from the direction of the junction with the main road, and heading towards Shooter’s Wood.’ Sneddon pointed. ‘I thought it was odd. There’s no one wants to drive down there, not in the middle of the night, leastways. If it was a lost tourist or summat, it’d have been in the daytime, wouldn’t it? So I listened out – ’
As he spoke, a woman appeared in the doorway of the farmhouse, wiping her hands on a towel. ‘Pete?’ she called anxiously.
Sneddon turned his head towards her. ‘It’s nothing to bother you, Rosie.’
Disregarding this reassurance, she came towards them, her eyes on Morton. He saw that she was attractive in a mature way and possibly a few years younger than her husband.
‘Sergeant Morton, madam,’ Morton introduced himself. ‘About the – the events at Balaclava House, just down the road.’
‘Oh, that . . .’ She looked worried. ‘I couldn’t believe it when Seb Pascal told me. I’d called in his garage, you know it? Just to get a couple of gallons of petrol in the car. The price is going up again, they say.’
‘Yes,’ said Morton, with feeling.
‘And Seb, he said he’d spoken to Gary, Gary Colley, that is, who lives down the lane there.’ She pointed in the direction of the Colleys’. ‘He said something really weird had happened at Balaclava House. Someone was dead. He said Mr Monty was all right. That was the first thing I asked, you know, was it poor Mr Monty? But Seb said he’d seen Mr Monty go by in a car driven by Mrs Harwell. That’s Mr Monty’s niece . . .’
‘Stop rabbiting on, woman!’ ordered her husband. ‘I’ve told him all that.’
‘It’s a worrying thing,’ protested his wife. ‘Things going on just down the lane and us none the wiser.’
Sneddon heaved a gusty sigh.
‘You all call him “Mr Monty”,’ Morton said curiously. ‘Sounds a bit odd to me.’
The Sneddons exchanged glances. Sneddon hunched his shoulders.
‘Sneddons, Colleys, Bickerstaffes, we’ve all bee
n here generations. My family was farming here when the Great War broke out. Colleys have been here as long if not longer. They worked for the Bickerstaffes before they took up the smallholding. Bickerstaffes, they were important then, a family that mattered hereabouts. We know times have changed. But our feelings haven’t, see? Besides, Mr Monty saw me grow up from a nipper. He saw Dave Colley grow up. He’s seen our two girls and Dave’s kids grow up. He’s owed some respect, I reckon. You can make what you like of it. Now, if you’re interested in that car I heard, come along with me, I’ll show you.’
‘Show me? Show me what?’ asked Morton, startled.
Sneddon heaved a deep reproachful sign and looked at him as if Morton was being deliberately obtuse. ‘The car. It’s what I’m telling you about, isn’t it? We can go in your vehicle, if you don’t mind me getting in it?’ Sneddon pointed to his boots. ‘It’s only honest dirt.’
The collie ran alongside them to Morton’s car but Sneddon sent it back to where his wife still stood. The dog settled down, nose on paws. Dog and Rosie Sneddon watched as Morton did a three-point turn in the yard and drove, with the farmer alongside him, back down the track to Toby’s Gutter Lane.
‘Turn left,’ said Sneddon, ‘down to the woods.’
Morton followed instructions. Sneddon was going to give his information in his own way. Any attempt to hurry him would result in his digging in his heels like an obstinate mule.
They rattled over more potholes and came to the first trees. Sneddon stuck to his policy of saying nothing, so Morton drove on slowly until they had reached almost the farther roadside limit of the woodland.
Abruptly Sneddon ordered, ‘Stop here. You can park up on that bit of grass. We walk from here.’
Morton did so, but growled, ‘I hope this is worth all this effort, Mr Sneddon? I’m making enquiries about a suspicious death. I hope you’re not wasting my time.’
Sneddon snorted. ‘Well, this is a bit of a mystery too, if you want to call it that, and you can make enquiries about it at the same time.’
He got out of the car and set off down a wide track, Morton on his heels.
‘Like I was telling you, I heard a car late last night after we’d gone to bed.’ Sneddon resumed his story, speaking over his shoulder. ‘Must have been well after midnight. I said to my wife, if that’s some bugger taken the wrong turning, he’s going to have a job getting back on the main road. But she didn’t answer me anything because she was asleep. She sleeps like a log, always has done. After that, I was sort of listening for the car coming back. But it didn’t come back before I fell asleep again meself. I’d had a hard day and I couldn’t worry about people driving round the countryside at night, getting themselves lost. If I’d stayed awake, I’d have seen the light in the sky from the fire.’
‘Fire?’ exclaimed Morton.
‘Mind out, now,’ Sneddon advised him, putting out a sunburned hand to warn him. ‘We’re just about at the edge. There is wire round it, but it’s not much.’
The remaining trees had thinned yet more while they’d been walking and now they were again in open land that rose towards the top of Shooter’s Hill. Ahead of them, a wonky notice at an angle showed the legend ‘Danger. Quarry’ in faded paintwork. There was a fence of sorts composed of tangled wire and blackberry bushes that had grown up round it. Sneddon led him to a wide gap where wire and bushes had been broken down. He pointed downwards.
‘Bloody hell!’ muttered Morton.
The quarry was long disused and overgrown. No one had worked it for almost half a century. The wide path they’d walked along must originally have been the access road before that, like the quarry, had been left for nature to recolonise. But someone had been here very recently. The grass at the edge of the steep descent, where the fence and bushes were destroyed, was scuffed and torn up. At the bottom of the excavation, resting among the debris of the old workings, was the blackened, burned-out skeleton of a car. A haze of dust and smoke still rose from it.
‘Stolen, could be,’ suggested Sneddon. ‘Or someone just wanted to get rid of it. Plenty of townsfolk think they can dump anything in the country. It’ll be the car I heard last night.’ He gave a satisfied nod. ‘This is where the blighters were taking it. They got out at the top here, gave it a good shove and sent it careering down to the bottom there. Either it caught fire or whoever drove it here climbed down and torched it. What are the police going to do about that, then? And who’s going to come out and take it away? Reckon no one will. That’ll just be left there to rust, along with all the rest, one more bit of junk in the countryside.’
‘Can we get down there?’ Morton asked, ignoring Sneddon’s grumbles and scouting round for a path.
‘This way,’ said Sneddon.
Together they scrambled to the quarry floor. When they reached it, Morton saw why Sneddon felt so strongly about rubbish dumped in the countryside. Fly-tipping had been going on here for some time. Old black plastic rubbish sacks lay around, their motley contents bursting out. There were the smashed remains of a wooden child’s cot, still showing scraps of the original painted decoration of teddy bears; a Radiation gas cooker such as he remembered his grandmother cooking at; and an old-fashioned pushbike. More recent domestic history was marked by a smashed television set.
The burned-out wreck of the car smouldered amongst all this. Morton saw that, before abandoning it to its fate, someone had taken time to remove the number plates. They’d change hands in a pub for ready money. The next time anyone saw those, they’d probably be fixed to a getaway car. A shimmer of heat came from the scorched metal frame and made his face tingle. He took out his mobile phone.
Sneddon, watching him impassively, observed, ‘You won’t get no signal for that down here in this bowl.’
He was right.
‘I’ll phone in when I get back to the lane. Someone will come out and secure the area. It may have something to do with the incident at Balaclava House,’ Morton told him. ‘I’m sure the wreck will be taken away.’
‘How did that chap die, then?’ asked Sneddon, after nodding in a satisfied way. His only real interest was the wreck of the car. The dead man at Balaclava was a secondary matter. He probably only asked for details so he could tell his wife.
‘We’re not sure yet. We’re awaiting identification and the post-mortem.’
‘Don’t know who he is, eh?’ That did puzzle Sneddon, who put up a hand to push his cap back on his head. ‘Old Mr Monty not know him?’ He squinted at Morton, his sunburned skin wrinkling.
‘Apparently not.’
Sneddon nodded again slowly. ‘He’ll be a stranger, then.’
The farmer turned and began to climb the slope of the disused quarry.
Chapter 8
Morton dropped Sneddon off at the turning to the farm and continued down Toby’s Gutter Lane towards the main road. He was a thorough man by nature and it made him good at his job. He wasn’t gifted with a great deal of imagination, but he did doggedly track down every detail. Now he sought out the petrol station belonging to Seb Pascal.
It was clear which one it must be. There was only one such establishment near the turning to the lane. The forecourt was empty except for a young man with a shaven skull. He was wearing stained blue work overalls and was polishing up a maroon hatchback that had apparently just been through the car wash. He looked up curiously as Morton pulled in, checking whether this was a customer requiring any service. But when Morton parked in a corner and set off towards the building, the young man’s expression sharpened. He returned to his car polishing.
Once through the automatic doors, Morton found himself in a mini mart. The shelves were stacked with a variety of goods, ranging from sweets and biscuits to tinned soup. In a far corner a separate unit held fresh snack food behind a glass shield. He glanced through the plate-glass window and saw that the youth outside by the maroon car had stopped work and taken out a mobile phone. He was talking earnestly into it, and looking towards the minimart. Catching sight of
Morton watching him through the window, the youngster turned away quickly.
Hah! thought Morton. You know I’m a copper, too, don’t you? Why does that worry you and who is that you’re calling to warn on that phone of yours, eh?
It was probably nothing to do with matters in hand and would have to wait. Morton turned to where a tall, olive-complexioned, black-haired man stood behind the counter. He was talking to a middle-aged woman assistant and watching the newcomer at the same time.
‘Mr Pascal?’ Morton asked, holding up his ID.
‘That’s me.’ Pascal gave him a suspicious look. ‘What’s the problem?’