The Unquiet Grave

by Steven Dunne

  Brook had been in the same boat when he’d made the move from London; before his transfer to the East Midlands he had taken photocopies of all the Reaper documents held by the Met. There were some cases that detectives couldn’t let go.

  Brook looked sideways at the remaining pile of documents – he was only halfway through. He pushed back his chair and went to stretch his legs in the car park, glancing enviously at a pair of WPCs sucking joyfully on their cigarettes.

  Scott Wheeler woke with a violent shudder, banging his head for the umpteenth time on the wooden roof of his tomb. He screamed and nursed his forehead, feeling delicately around the days-old swelling from that first blow on the night of Chelsea’s party. Gradually the pain subsided and it took a moment to remember where he was but the awful realisation flooded in before the back of his head had come to rest on the damp plastic. The sunny light of his bedroom remained in his dreams; he was back in his damp, dark prison.

  All was dark. All was quiet. It was night outside because the faint glow of daylight from the air pipe was gone. With a surge of panic Scott wondered if the pipe had been pulled up and he slithered on his back across to the reassuring flow of cold air. His breathing slowed in immediate relief. He could see stars. The universe was still there, though strangely it had decided that it could continue without Scott Wheeler.

  How many days? Six? Seven? And how much longer would he have to be here? The passage of time brought a pinprick of a tear to Scott’s eye but he brushed it away. No more crying. Got to stay strong.

  To forget the ebbing of his life, Scott listened for the sound of anything other than the now-familiar trickle of soil dropping on to him through the cracks in the planks where the heavy plastic sheeting was holed. Nothing in the world at the other end of his air pipe stirred. Nothing suggested the noise of a search. They must think I’m dead.

  A few days ago he’d heard, or imagined he’d heard, voices somewhere in the distance, somewhere above ground, shouting to each other. Shouting for him? The more he thought about it later the more he heard his name. People were looking for him. He was important. People wanted him back in their lives. Scott Wheeler mattered. He’d shouted back with all the strength he could muster, even risking pushing against the shaky wooden boards, but many hours later, when night had fallen and the voices had gone, Scott had sunk back on to the damp plastic, distraught and terrified that the soil he’d dislodged would engulf him.

  After that day, he could fight no more. Without fail, every time he’d pushed and hammered his fists and feet against the wood, more soil had fallen, sometimes into his mouth, sometimes into his eyes, forcing him to sit up and bang his head again, freeing up more dirt to drop and fill his dwindling space.

  After a long time screaming, hammering and kicking after he first woke in the tomb, he was defeated. There was no way around it. He was trapped. He couldn’t move. He couldn’t sit up. He couldn’t go to the toilet. He couldn’t wash. He couldn’t even turn over without dislodging more soil. All he could do was lie on his back in almost perpetual night and exist, ignoring the stomach cramps, the pain from his spreading rashes, the stench of his waste soaking his clothes and steeping his once-soft skin in filth. He’d tried to pass the time rubbing his limbs to keep warm in the cold ground and occasionally even sleeping if he could ignore the smell from his soiled clothing. How long had he been here?

  Don’t think about it. Time passing was bad. Stop thinking about time, about anything.

  He took a long slow breath of the cold clean air blowing down the pipe, the most important ally in his fight for life, and it calmed him. Keep still, he’d learned. Be like a robot, turned off for a while. Don’t move. It’s a game and the only way to win was to survive. With little choice, he’d adapted to his situation as far as possible, forced himself to abandon futile attempts to escape and finally cut out movement altogether. Even turning over on to his stomach was an issue, although he was young and supple and could do it at a pinch, at the cost of soil invasion.

  But why bother? Stay still. Right. That was his ace. He was young and strong, a good footballer, a cyclist, good on a skateboard. Movement was everything to him. Even with the TV on, his mum complained he could never keep still. The TV. Scott had a surge of yearning. Don’t think about that. You’re a robot, turned off for a while. Like a Transformer. Keeping still, waiting to show your power.

  Back at his desk, Brook started on the rest of Matilda’s file. The two-pronged investigation into her death seemed to have hit a dead end when there was a sensational development which appeared to unlock the case. Five days after the discovery of Matilda Copeland’s body, Colin Ealy, the estate’s apprentice woodsman, disappeared and was immediately promoted from a person of interest to the inquiry’s prime suspect.

  ‘Why isn’t this at the front of the folder?’ Brook wondered aloud. He soon found out.

  For the next two weeks, in tandem with a nationwide manhunt, Bannon and Laird proceeded to take Colin Ealy’s life apart. His bedroom at his mother’s house in Osmaston, his clothes, his tools and equipment, his workplace – all were methodically searched and all artefacts removed and subjected to detailed analysis, piece by piece, fibre by fibre, undergoing the most rigorous examinations available at the time. Nothing incriminating was found.

  Unsurprisingly, Briggs and Ealy had access to a vehicle for their work, an old 1952 Bedford CA Panel Van, supplied by the estate owners. It had been in Ealy’s possession on the night of the abduction and it had already been searched but now it was subjected to lengthy forensic and fingerprint tests.

  Brook sat back. ‘Why would a gamekeeper on a private estate drive nine miles to Mackworth on a Tuesday night to abduct a girl?’ he asked himself. ‘Did he know Matilda?’ Unlikely. He read on, baffled.

  Minute traces of blood found in Ealy’s van had briefly raised hopes of a positive outcome but it was found to belong to one of the various dead animals that would sometimes be thrown into the back of the vehicle, appropriate to a gamekeeper’s work.

  In addition, extensive fingerprinting of all surfaces was compared to prints taken from the victim’s bedroom but if Matilda Copeland had ever been in the vehicle, she’d left no trace. The van was clean and the reason for Ealy’s departure was, and remained, a mystery to this day.

  The rest of the documents dealt with case reviews and developments after the inquiry had petered out. In 1970, when the hunt for Matilda’s killer had gone cold, Walter Laird had received and followed up an anonymous tip, claiming to be a sighting of Ealy in a remote part of Scotland. Unfortunately, the day before Laird arrived in Crianlarich in Stirling, the man in question had vanished again. Colin Ealy was never traced but remained a key suspect based solely on the fact of his disappearance.

  Even Clive Copeland, who had focused on Colin Ealy’s disappearance as soon as he joined the police force, spending two annual holidays in Crianlarich for good measure, had been forced to accept that it would never be proved that Ealy had killed Matilda without finding him and extracting a confession.

  Brook ran a finger down the witness list one last time. Obviously Colin Ealy’s status was unknown but gamekeeper John Briggs was dead. Barney’s youngest son, Winston, was alive at the time of the last review. If Ealy and Winston Barney were still alive, they would both be in their late sixties.

  Brook closed the file and turned to his laptop. He found Winston Barney’s name on the electoral register and made a note of his last known address. He lived locally in Ashbourne, the attractive market town twenty minutes north of Derby, and on Brook’s route home to Hartington. Cross-referencing on the PNC database, Brook found no criminal record. Of Colin Ealy there was no mention. He had effectively disappeared off the face of the earth in 1965.

  Brook sat back. ‘That’s enough,’ he muttered, tossing the mildewed folder aside and massaging his forehead. He pushed back his chair, gathered up the file and his laptop and left the room.

  The corridor outside was in darkness save for a bar of light u
nder Copeland’s door. Brook had been so absorbed, he hadn’t heard Copeland arrive. The ex-DCI was working on a Saturday. Give the old boy credit. He takes his work seriously.

  Brook hesitated, knuckles poised. He wanted to speak to Copeland, find out why he’d been given Matilda’s file or, at the very least, get Copeland to acknowledge that he’d left it for Brook to see. If it was a mistake, Copeland hadn’t realised it yet since he hadn’t asked for it back.

  Brook knocked softly and entered. He was greeted by the sight of Copeland stretched out in his chair fast asleep. Instead of turning to leave, Brook tiptoed to the desk and took a peek at the tatty green folder sitting on it. Brook’s heart skipped a beat. The name on the file was Jeff Ward, murdered on 22 December 1973, and identified by ex-DCI Sam Bannon as a victim of an unknown serial killer – the Pied Piper.

  Brook stared at Copeland, asleep on his chair, wondering whether to wake him and ask about the Ward file and the Pied Piper. In the event, he opted to leave, closing the door softly behind him.

  Copeland’s eyes opened as soon as the door closed. He looked down at the Jeff Ward dossier. ‘Damn.’ He picked up his mobile phone. ‘It’s me. Brook’s seen the Jeff Ward file. It was my mistake. It’s not nothing. He knows about the Pied Piper. Sam left a note in the Billy Stanforth file and Brook found it, so I was checking the Ward file to see if we’d missed anything else. Agreed.’ He replaced the receiver and looked thoughtfully towards the door.

  At least Brook hadn’t brought back Tilly’s murder book to drop on his desk. So what did he want? To ask why he’d been given her file? Maybe even to ask questions about Tilly’s death? Well, it was too soon for that. But at least he hadn’t returned the file. Copeland smiled at the space vacated by his colleague. Brook was interested.

  After driving back to his cottage in worsening weather, Brook hurried inside through the rain. He stooped to pick up a single Christmas card from the mat and dumped it on the kitchen table. Before preparing his evening meal of samosas and cream cheese, he lit the small wood burner in the tiny lounge and left the door open to listen to the soothing atavistic crackle of nascent fire, while he sat in the kitchen reading the final reports from Matilda Copeland’s groaning file.

  The last few documents were reports of tests carried out after the development of DNA profiling in the mid-eighties, including all subsequent advances. All tests had been unable to match Matilda Copeland’s genetic profile to any artefacts connected to the missing woodsman, Colin Ealy.

  Brook finally closed the file and pushed it to one side, returning his thoughts to the Jeff Ward dossier he’d seen on Copeland’s desk, his excitement at seeing it now dissipated.

  Of course he’s looking into it. Copeland and Laird were the investigating officers. And it’s unsolved. That’s what Copeland does. Even so, his reaction when I mentioned the Pied Piper seemed odd.

  Brook shook it out of his head, his thoughts drifting back to his interview with Mullen, the lonely, troubled old man, haunted by the death of his friend half a century before – a man unable or unwilling to leave a house that was rotting around him because the outside world was too hard to face. Brook didn’t know whether to envy or pity him.

  After his meal, Brook went to stretch out in front of the fire. He remembered his Christmas card and tore it open. It was from British Telecom. Season’s Greetings. He leaned towards the wood burner, opened the door and dropped the envelope on to the burning logs. Then he held the card above the flames. A second later, he withdrew it, closed the cast-iron door and placed the card on his bare mantelpiece.

  The next day, the 16th, Brook decided not to spend Sunday morning at his metal desk in the station basement, preferring to do a little work from home. It was mainly the kind of legwork he routinely delegated to Noble and it was a chore having to hunt down the simple matter of a few addresses. Worse, he knew Noble would have found the information in half the time.

  After a satisfying walk in the sharp cold air of a winter’s morning, Brook drove the twelve miles to Bakewell and spent Sunday afternoon buying food to replenish his fridge-freezer. The market town was teeming with happy families, apparently enjoying pre-Christmas shopping, and Brook left restocked but thoroughly depressed.

  In mid-afternoon, he drove up Monyash Road back to the A515 to Hartington but when he reached the turn-off, he kept going, arriving in Ashbourne twenty minutes later.

  He double-checked the address of the imposing three-storey house in front of him then banged hard on the heavy door, stepping back to inspect the solid stone edifice. The front door pulled back to a chain and a well-groomed grey-haired man peered out.

  Brook brandished his warrant card. ‘Mr Winston Barney?’

  A look of foreboding swept over the man’s features. ‘Yes.’

  ‘DI Brook, Derby CID. I’d like to ask you some questions about Matilda Copeland.’

  The man’s face turned white and his eyes poured hate into Brook’s. ‘My grandchildren are here.’

  Brook’s eyes narrowed, trying to discern his meaning. ‘It won’t take long.’

  ‘I’m finished answering questions about poor Tilly Copeland and you can tell her brother that from me. I wasn’t her bloody boyfriend and neither was my brother. Now please leave.’

  ‘Mr Barney, I—’

  ‘Tilly’s dead and she’s not coming back. I didn’t kill her and neither did Arthur or my father, God rest their souls. I wish to God Arthur had never seen her that night. Don’t come back again, Inspector, or I’ll report you for harassment.’ Barney slammed the door, leaving Brook in no doubt that further knocking would be futile.

  Arriving home, Brook poured a modest measure of malt and water and decided to hunt up the Christmas decorations from the attic to complement the small goose he’d purchased for Christmas dinner. He hadn’t put the decorations up for three or four years but if Terri did make it to Hartington for the holiday, he had to be ready.

  When he’d finished, he stepped back to admire his handiwork. It hadn’t taken long. He only had a few streamers to drape on the wall, some of which he’d torn and had to discard. He found some coloured tinsel and wound it across the mantelpiece with a couple of sprigs of near-desiccated holly. At the bottom of the box he also found a folded piece of A4 paper covered in childlike crayon daubs in red and green. Terri’s first Christmas card to her father had been homemade when she was a small child. There were remnants of gold sparkles on the front but most of the glitter had fallen away. Brook tried not to see it as a metaphor.

  He placed the Christmas card on the mantelpiece next to the card from his ‘Good Friends at BT’ then took out his mobile to ring her. He decided against it. She might tell him she couldn’t come for Christmas and not knowing her plans would at least give him hope. Instead he texted. ‘Goose in freezer. Decorations up. No urgent cases. My time is your time. x.’

  Nineteen

  Monday, 17 December 2012

  Brook sipped his second tea of the day early the next morning, a blanket wrapped round his shoulders against the cold. When he was able to open his eyes, he took out his brief notes about the death of Copeland’s sister and read through what he’d written. Three things had struck him. First, Trevor Taylor, the man who’d witnessed Matilda running towards Radbourne Common, the man that investigating officers Bannon and Laird had immediately picked out as a suspect, wasn’t on the list of those owning a vehicle in 1965.

  His mother had owned a car but, curiously, the file contained no reports or statements taken from her about her son’s use of it. Whoever abducted Matilda would have needed transport to take her, dead or alive, to the site of the murder and then on to Osmaston Park Lake. And if Taylor was a suspect, as a matter of routine Bannon and Laird should have asked his mother whether her son had borrowed the car that night.

  Brook gazed at the single word representing the other significant omission from the file in his eyes: ‘Boyfriends?’ He was not sure how he might broach the subject of Matilda’s sexual activity with Copel
and.

  A few hours later, Brook parked in a pub car park off the A609 in Rawson Green, a hamlet near Belper, a small market town north of Derby. On closer inspection, Brook realised the pub was no more, another victim of the home entertainment industry and cheap supermarket alcohol. It had been converted into a private day nursery, which explained the full car park at eleven in the morning.

  Brook locked the BMW, trying not to glance towards the nursery in case of reproachful looks from staff inside the building. He hurried along the main road to a terraced row of small, redbrick cottages, originally built to house workers at the long-abandoned rail yard round the corner. The wind blew cold droplets of winter rain into his face as he walked.

  He rapped on the flimsy knocker of a white plastic door belonging to the end cottage in the row. While he waited, he looked around the neat front of house, defaced on the upper storey by a satellite dish turning its face to the heavens to seek the word of God. The small yard was paved and bare, devoid of plants, for minimal maintenance. This was the future for all who lived to infirmity, and the present for the growing underclass that aped such indolence. Brook resented it all the more as old age beckoned to him.

  He banged down on the knocker again. It was shaped like a funeral urn which lightened his mood for a moment.

  As he took a step to look through the front window, the door opened wide enough to tighten a door chain. A white-haired old man uncertainly pushed his face into the gap. Brook noticed the tobacco-stained left hand straining to maintain pressure on the rubber-tipped walking stick.

  ‘I don’t buy on the doorstep. On your way.’

  ‘Walter Laird?’

  ‘Who are you?’ growled the old man, voice drenched in tar. He narrowed his eyes at Brook, who declined to reply, instead holding his warrant card close to Laird’s face for inspection.

  Laird squinted at the ID, nodded in recognition. ‘Brook. Clive mentioned you might call. About the Stanforth boy.’ He laughed suddenly, exposing unnaturally bright false teeth which shifted slightly as his jaw moved. ‘You’re not expecting to get anywhere with that donkey, are you, lad? It’s been reviewed to death and if there was a result to be had, I would have closed it myself.’