by Tim Ellis
‘Of course you do. And anyway, if you ever find a man, he’ll have to be vetted, you know?’
‘Vetted?’
‘Kowalski and I will have to see if he’s worthy of you, make sure he understands that if he doesn’t treat you right he’ll end up in the Thames wearing a concrete overcoat…’
She laughed. ‘As if. You sound like the Godfather.’
Parish stood up. ‘Right, come on, we haven’t got time to sit around while you stuff your face.’
‘I feel like an appendage sometimes, Sir.’ She picked up the bottle of water and the second half of her sandwich while she held the remains of the first half in her mouth, and followed him out of the canteen and along the corridor to the incident room.
Parish stuck his head through the door. ‘Don’t forget lunch, Dan,’ he said.
‘Is it that time already?’
‘Past that time, it’s quarter to one. Are we there yet?’
‘Not quite. I should imagine I’ll have the plaintext of the first message by tomorrow morning.’
‘I thought we only had you for two days, Dan?’
‘I’ve spoken to my Head of Section, and you’ve got me for as long as it takes.’
‘That’s great Dan. How’s the hotel?’
‘Very comfortable. Do you know they have a spa?’
‘Oh?’
‘Last night, after the evening meal, a lovely young lady gave me a deep upper back and scalp massage, and a skin perfecting facial. Afterwards, I tried out the steam room. I slept like the proverbial log last night.’
‘Well, that’s great, Dan. Glad to hear we’re taking care of you.’
‘Oh, most definitely. Tonight I’m going to try the full body coarse sea salt, oil, and Juniper berry scrub, followed by a deep body and scalp massage using hot and cold stones.’
‘I’m sure that will relieve the stress, Dan?’
‘You should come and join me, Inspector?’
‘Thanks for the invitation, but I don’t think my better half would go along with that, and I’m also booked to assist Constable Richards here with her studying. Right, come on Richards, we have places to go and people to see. Later, Dan.’
Dan got up. ‘I’ll go for some lunch now that I’ve been interrupted, then.’
‘Are we paying for him to have massages, Sir?’ Richards asked as they walked down the stairs to the car park.
‘Dan thinks we are, but we’re not.’
‘Shouldn’t you tell him?’
‘I don’t think so. If I do, he might decide to go back to GCHQ and not help us. If oily sex with his masseur helps him think then I’m all for it.’
‘Sex! Where did the sex come from?’
‘You don’t think I was fooled by all that talk of facials, stones, and Juniper berries do you? He’s having the extra-special massage.’
‘You have a dirty mind, Sir.’
‘I know.’
‘Where are we going now?’
‘Friendly Farm, then…’
‘I don’t think I want to go there anymore, Sir.’
‘I thought you were eager to see the hedgehogs, badgers, and suchlike?’
‘That was before I knew what they did with them.’
Parish laughed as he climbed in the driver’s seat. ‘You’re the one with the dirty mind, Richards. I don’t think they use the wild animals for… whatever it is you’re thinking they’re used for.’
‘I’m not thinking anything, Sir.’
‘Good, then you won’t mind coming with me.’
‘Where else are we going?’
‘We need to catch up, Richards. This is the third day… Well that’s not strictly true. It’s seven years since the first murder, over a week since the second one, and we still haven’t investigated either of them properly.’
‘We need more people, Sir?’
‘You’re more people, Richards. If you weren’t here, I’d be on my own.’
‘What about…’
‘There are no more people. Remember the budget ends on the thirty-first of March.’
‘What happens then, Sir? Do all the murderers go free and we have to join the jobless queue in the Job Centre?’
‘If you keep making jokes like that, Richards, you’ll be the first one to be sacrificed. So, as I was saying, we still need to see Susan Reeves’ husband, and then go and talk to her colleagues at the estate agents. We should then have a word with Tanya Mathews’ partner, Beatrice Nosworthy, and see someone in Social Services at Redbridge Council about her cases.’
‘DI Lewin investigated…’
‘And talking of DI Lewin, remind me to take the box of files relating to John Lewin’s death home with me tonight.’
‘Don’t forget you’re helping me, Sir?’
‘I’ve not forgotten, Richards.’
***
Friendly Farm was in Little End, just before Chipping Ongar on the London/Romford Road. After Church Road, which led to the tenth century Saxon church with its famous sundial above the south entrance, and King Alfred the Great – who repelled the Danes – buried in its graveyard, Parish turned left.
‘I don’t know if I’ll be able to look any of the animals in the eye, Sir. I mean, I won’t know if… if they’ve done things.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous, Richards. The animals are innocent victims in all this.’
‘Yes, but if they liked what the humans did to them they might… you know… want to do something with me.’
Parish threw his head back and laughed. ‘You need to get out more, Richards.’
‘That’s what I’ve been telling you, Sir, but I can’t find a man, and even if I could you’ve got me working twenty-seven hours a day.’
He parked in the cobbled courtyard, which was surrounded by the main house and an assortment of outbuildings. There were seven other vehicles in the yard – three cars, two horseboxes, a transit van, and a motorcycle and sidecar.
‘I don’t see any animals, Sir.’
‘That’s probably because they’re…’
She put her mitten hands over her ears. ‘Don’t say it, I don’t want to know – la, la, la.’
They walked to the main house, which appeared to be a recent barn conversion with a mixture of old and new, and knocked on the door. While they waited for a response, Parish looked around. The outbuildings were old brick, but the roofs were new slate. They could hear horses clip-clopping on cobbles, but couldn’t see them.
‘I can’t imagine living here and trying to eat my food with this pong all around, Sir.’
‘The smell of the country, Richards.’ He banged on the door a bit louder.
‘There’d be no point in having a bubble bath, or wearing expensive perfume, you’d always smell of cow dung.’
‘So, you haven’t got a yearning for the country then?’
‘I’m a city girl through and through, Sir. The country is too… smelly for me.’
The door finally opened. A thin middle-aged woman wearing a red riding jacket and beige jodhpurs stood before them smacking a leather crop against her dark brown leather knee-high boots.
‘Yes?’
Parish revealed his warrant card. ‘We’d like to speak to whoever’s in charge about the reporter Marie Langley, and something called The Chameleon Club.’
‘I am Lucinda Wesley, and I’m the person in charge. I saw the news, and I’ve been expecting you.’ She stood aside to let them in. Parish pushed Richards inside first, and the woman led them into a kitchen with a wooden table surrounded by six chairs, a wood-burning stove, and black and white linoleum diamonds on the floor. ‘Can I offer you a drink?’
‘That would be good,’ Parish said.
‘Roger,’ Lucinda shouted, and a good-looking man in his early twenties with short black hair came running in submissively. ‘Make coffee for three.’
The man nodded and set about his task.
‘Please, sit down,’ Lucinda said to them.
They sat on one side of the tabl
e facing the kitchen sink and a window, which looked out onto the grey cloudy day. Lucinda sat on the other side of the table, removed her riding hat, and brushed her blonde fringe back out of her eyes.
‘As you know,’ Parish began, ‘we think Marie Langley has been abducted, and we’re trying to trace her whereabouts…’
‘And you think I’ve abducted her, and she’s somewhere hereabouts?’
‘We’re investigating all leads, Mrs Wesley. Miss Langley appears to have phoned you on a number of occasions recently, and paid you a hundred and twenty pounds on three separate occasions. Her boyfriend found that strange.’
‘Marie was a member of our Chameleon Club…’
‘Oh?’
‘These are people who make donations to our Animal Rescue Centre because they care deeply about the wellbeing of animals.’
Roger put three cups of coffee down in the middle of the table with a jug of milk and a bowl of sugar.
Lucinda glared at him. ‘Spoons, idiot?’
His eyes opened wide. He quickly obtained the spoons, and put one each on their saucers and another one in the sugar bowl. Lucinda waved him away when he stood hovering.
‘I see,’ Parish replied. ‘So, The Chameleon Club is made up of animal loving philanthropists?’
‘Exactly,’ Lucinda said and smiled.
Parish put four sugars in his coffee, stirred, and drank. ‘Do you know whether Miss Langley might have been writing an article on your… Animal Rescue Centre?’
‘If she was, she never mentioned it.’
‘Could we have a look around?’
‘Do you have a search warrant?’
‘Do we need one?’
‘It depends on what you’re looking for?’
‘Constable Richards here loves animals. She wanted to see the creatures that you’ve rescued.’
‘I suppose it would be all right… Roger?’ she shouted over her shoulder.
Roger came running in again.
‘Tell Candy that two members of the local police force are coming to inspect her Animal Rescue Centre.’
Roger ran out to do Lucinda’s bidding.
‘Hardly an inspection,’ Parish said.
‘We’ll give Candy five minutes or so to prepare. The Animal Rescue Centre isn’t normally open to the public.’
‘I thought this was Friendly Farm?’ Richards said.
‘Oh, we’re very friendly here, Constable, but not to people who walk in off the street.’
‘Then who are you friendly to?’
‘The animals?’
‘Oh.’
Eventually, Roger came back and nodded at Lucinda.
She stood up and said, ‘If you’ll follow me, and can I ask you not to put your face or any part of your body near the animals. People have a habit of poking bits of themselves through the mesh, and we don’t want any accidents, do we?’
They followed Lucinda Wesley through the stable door at the rear of the kitchen into another courtyard with more outbuildings and were shepherded into a long dilapidated wooden shed-type construction. Above the door was a sign that indicated they were entering the Animal Rescue Centre.
Candy, who met them inside, was a thin brunette in her early twenties. She had porcelain skin, and a face that could shrivel cabbage.
‘These are the police officers who want to see your animals, Candy,’ Lucinda said.
‘Follow me,’ Candy ordered.
There was a central isle, and on either side were cages. In the first cage on the left, so Candy informed them, was a bull terrier with a scarred face and one eye called Attila. It growled at them, and Richards clung to Parish’s arm and whispered, ‘He doesn’t seem very grateful to have been rescued.’
They were shown the cages on both the left and right of the central isle, which housed a menagerie of animals. These included an otter, a parrot that swore a lot – and Parish wondered if it had belonged to CI Naylor – a boa constrictor called Wiley, two tarantulas, a capuchin monkey, a tortoise, a spiny lobster, a cat with only one leg, and three blind rabbits called Millie, Tilly and Billy.
‘Outside, we also have a zebra, a donkey, a Shetland pony, a vulture, and a wallaby called Thumper.’
‘Quite a collection,’ Parish said.
‘Thank you, Candy,’ Lucinda said. ‘If there’s nothing else, Inspector, I’ll show you out?’
‘Thank you for your hospitality, Mrs Wesley.’
Once they’d climbed into the car Richards said, ‘I didn’t see any evidence of… you know.’
‘What type of evidence are you talking about?’
‘Well… you know?’
‘No, I don’t know, that’s why I’m asking.’
‘Well, I don’t know, but I didn’t see any. How do Vice know it’s a bestiality club, do you think?’
‘They’ve probably got someone working there undercover.’
‘What… you mean Candy could be one of us?’
‘Or one of them. Once you become a fully qualified detective, you’ll be able to work undercover.’
‘I don’t think I’d like that, Sir. They’d expect me to join in, wouldn’t they? The person who’s undercover in there now,’ she cocked her head back towards Friendly Farm as Parish pulled out of the drive onto the London/Romford Road, ‘is probably, you know… doing things. If they refused, it would look suspicious and they could end up in a shallow grave in the woods somewhere.’
‘You’re watching far too much American rubbish on the Crime Channel, Richards. Your Mother and I have nearly worked out how to put the Parental Controls on, you know.’
‘Stop being mean, Sir.’
Chapter Ten
Parish turned onto the A113 at Passingford Bridge and drove past Stapleford Aerodrome and then through Albridge. The SatNav directed him left at Gravel Lane toward Grange Hill.
Susan Reeves, the twenty-nine year-old Estate Agent, had lived at 17 Fairview Road with her nine-month-old daughter, Libby, and her husband, Greg – an Independent Financial Consultant. Sometime during the night of Tuesday 23rd and Wednesday 24th February she was sexually assaulted, mutilated, and left hanging upside down from a meat hook in an abandoned tyre warehouse at the end of a road with no name on the outskirts of Redbridge.
Richards knocked on the front door of the three bedroom semi-detached house. Net curtains twitched in surrounding houses.
A woman nearer sixty than fifty, who needed her roots treating, answered the door. Her eyes were red, and her mascara had run.
Parish held his warrant card up and introduced the two of them. ‘We’d like to talk to Mr Reeves, if that’s at all possible?’ he said.
‘It’s been eight days since my daughter was murdered – eight days! Where the hell have you been? What have you been doing? If it were a celebrity’s daughter that had been murdered you’d be all over us like a rash, but because we’re nobodies, we hear nothing. You’ve got a damned nerve that’s what I think…’
Parish held up his hand to stop the tirade. ‘Do you think we might come inside, Mrs…?’
The woman raised her voice so that the neighbours could hear her. ‘What, you don’t want everyone to know that you don’t care about finding my daughter’s killer?’
‘We can come back another time if it’s not convenient?’ Richards offered.
The woman burst into tears. Richards stepped forward to comfort her, and help her inside. Parish followed them into the hall, shut the front door, and shuffled into the living room like an unwanted guest at a funeral.
‘Someone did come round last week, didn’t they?’ Richards said sitting down next to the woman on the beige two-seater sofa.
The walls were white, the carpet a dull red, and Parish could smell recently applied furniture polish. With its gas fire, wall-mounted television, and proudly displayed baby pictures, he could tell that normal people lived in this house.
‘A woman in uniform came to tell us that Susan had been found and to ask us some questions, but since then we’v
e heard nothing.’
‘I can only apologise, Mrs…’ Parish said.
‘Fairchild. I’m… I was Susan’s Mother.’
A short bald-headed man came through a set of glass doors from another room. He was terribly pale, and looked like a walking corpse.
‘Greg, it’s the police,’ Mrs Fairchild said.
‘So I see. Have you come to tell us that it was all a terrible mistake and Susan is coming home?’
‘I’m sorry, no,’ Parish said. ‘We’ve come to ask you some questions.’
‘We don’t know anything. We don’t even know when they’re going to release Susan’s body, so that we can say goodbye to her.’
‘I see that another woman has gone missing,’ Mrs Fairchild said. ‘Is it him?’
Richards held the woman’s hands in hers. ‘We think so,’ she said.
Parish recalled how Richards was genuinely very good at comforting the relatives of murder victims. He was glad she was there with him, because it was not really his thing. He hated the emotional side of murder investigations. Yes, he felt sorry for the relatives of the victims, but in the end he wasn’t really involved except in obtaining information, and catching the killer. After he’d been doing this job for a while he realised that emotions were excess baggage, no longer needed, useless appendages. He had buried them so deep inside that now he didn’t know where they were anymore. Maybe he was abnormal, or maybe it’s what happened to all murder detectives – he would have to ask Kowalski.
Parish addressed the husband. ‘You can be certain in the knowledge that we have not forgotten about your wife, Mr Reeves,’ Parish said. ‘We’ve been comparing your wife’s murder to an earlier unsolved case.’
‘He’s done this before?’ Greg Reeves asked.
‘Yes, seven years ago, in 2003.’
‘And he wasn’t caught?’
‘No. He stopped for some reason. The lead detective died under suspicious circumstances, and the investigation went cold.’
‘Come and sit down, Greg,’ Mrs Fairchild said getting up. ‘I’ll make us a pot of tea.’ She went out and Parish could hear her clattering in the kitchen.