‘This one,’ the father said.
The grave was close to the wall. Wreaths, still fresh, lay in a row along its crest. The children’s den, a makeshift shelter of corrugated steel, was close by.
‘Jimmy ran first,’ the older of the two boys had told me earlier. ‘I would of stayed, but when we heard the scream, he took off, like, and I had to goes with him.’
We looked down at the grave, none of us quite sure what to do. Then Tom took off his jacket and handed it to me before dropping flat and pressing his ear to the ground.
‘They heard banging first,’ the father said. ‘And scrabbling. They thought it might be a rat.’
‘Hush up a bit, mate,’ said Tom.
‘Then the screaming,’ said the dad. ‘They both swore they heard it. I spoke to Ray and Elaine next door and their Micky heard it as well. I wouldn’t have called you out if it had only been our two.’
‘Did you hear any words?’ I’d asked the younger boy, whom I’d spoken to alone. ‘Just screaming, or words?’
He’d beckoned me close and whispered, ‘Help me.’
‘They’re good lads,’ their father was saying now. ‘They’re not liars. Not normally, anyway.’
Tom’s face creased in concentration.
‘Maybe we should wait by the gate—’ I began.
‘Here’s Dwane,’ said the father.
I heard the gate clang shut and turned to see a peculiar figure had talked his way past PC Butterworth. The size of a ten-year-old child, he had the shoulders, arms and legs of a grown man. His hair was thick and dark brown, his jaw covered in stubble, and his heavy, suntanned features suggested a man of around thirty. His eyes seemed overly large in a head that was itself large. Dressed in dull grey and brown working clothes, he had a large shovel slung over one shoulder.
‘Church sexton,’ the father added. ‘It’s his job to look after the graves.’
‘Anything?’ I asked Tom.
‘If you’d all pipe down a second, I might stand a chance,’ he snapped back.
I held up one hand and pressed the other to my lips as the small man drew near. The wind rustled the trees above our heads and a bird screeched. In the distance, I could hear voices and the occasional roar of a car engine. When I looked away, I saw that our audience, the people gathered round the periphery of the churchyard, had increased.
Unable to resist any longer, I joined Tom and lay on the other side of the grave. The soil smelled of ash, chopped wood and something sweetly floral. I glanced up to see freesias not six inches away and, beyond them, the horizontal face of Tom Devine. For a second we looked into each other’s eyes and I felt an inexplicable but acute sense of embarrassment. Then he pulled a face at me and got up.
‘Patsy,’ I said, too quietly for it to have any hope of reaching below ground. I wanted to yell it, but even I knew what a spectacle I’d make, screaming a missing girl’s name into a fresh grave. ‘Patsy,’ I repeated, as loud as I dared.
‘On your feet, Lovelady,’ said a new voice, and I looked up to see the DI standing over us with two of his sergeants.
Detective Inspector Jack Sharples must have been five foot ten, because that was the minimum height for a male officer in Lancashire back then, but he was so thin and frail that he looked smaller. He was a taciturn man but had the ability to see through all the extraneous detail and get right to the heart of any issue. He was known as ‘No Shit Sharples’. He was also something of a legend on the force because he’d worked on the Moors Murders. Rumour had it he’d left Manchester because he couldn’t face another bad case involving dead kids.
I scrambled up. WPCs in the 1960s wore fitted black skirts. They were pleated at the back to allow us to run, but they were no respecters of modesty when it came to clambering to our feet in the presence of senior officers. Also, I noticed with dismay, the priest. And another man. Early forties, portly, sandy-coloured hair, wearing a suit. I knew his face, if not his name. He’d been one of the occupants of the Daimler watching the filming yesterday, and had come into the station this evening.
‘Anything?’ The look on Sharples’s face left me in no doubt how he expected us to answer.
‘Nothing. But Florence may have keener ears than me,’ Tom said.
I shook my head.
‘That grave’s not been touched,’ said a high-pitched, sexless voice. Dwane, the sexton, had taken up position at the head of the mound. He nodded down. ‘That’s how I left it.’
Beneath the wreaths, the grave looked like nothing other than a pile of earth to me.
‘How can you be sure of that?’ I asked him.
‘That’s how I smooth it.’ He looked at me as though noticing me for the first time. ‘People think grave-digging’s easy – just dig it up and put it back. You can’t do that. If someone else had dug up my grave, I’d know about it.’
‘Dwane’s always very thorough,’ said the priest. ‘And very neat.’
The sandy-haired man in the suit was looking back at the people by the church gate. ‘I really don’t like the attention this is attracting,’ he said.
‘Come on, folks.’ The DI turned to leave. ‘We’ve work to be doing. Sorry to drag you out at this hour, Father, Mr Bannister.’
‘Sir!’ The word had left my mouth before I could think what was to follow it. The DI looked back over his shoulder. Tom hadn’t moved, but his eyes were on his shoes.
‘We have four witnesses who claim they heard noises coming from this grave.’
‘Four kids,’ Sharples corrected me. ‘How old were that lot?’
‘Aged between six and ten,’ Tom jumped in before I could open my mouth. He saw me glaring at him. ‘Smart kids, though,’ he mumbled. ‘Not daft.’
‘Been watching The Addams Family, have they?’ asked the man called Bannister.
‘Their mother puts her foot down on that,’ said the father. ‘They do like Doctor Who, though.’
‘Well, there you go.’ Sharples looked me up and down. ‘Tidy yourself up before you come back, Lovelady.’
I glanced down to see my tights had ripped, and there were grass stains on my black skirt.
‘Sir, I think we need to be sure.’ Again I stopped him as he was about to turn away. The other man, Bannister, looked at me and shook his head.
I ignored him. ‘It’s not impossible, sir,’ I said.
‘No one’s touched that grave,’ said Dwane.
‘Florence, I’m not sure we’d hear her anyway,’ said Tom. ‘I really don’t think sound travels through the ground.’
‘Certainly not from a wooden box six feet under,’ said Bannister with a nasty smile.
‘Four and a half,’ said Dwane. ‘The grave is six foot deep; the coffin is eighteen inches high. Four and a half feet of earth on top of that.’
‘Even one foot might be too much,’ said Tom.
‘How do you know?’ I said. ‘How does anyone know? Who’s tried it out?’
Bannister said, ‘Sharples, this is getting out of hand. Can you control your officer?’
The DI took a step towards me. ‘Lovelady, I have three missing kids, and in case it’s escaped your notice, we have a bloody audience here. I do not want to set folk talking about them being buried alive.’
‘I spoke to those boys, sir. I don’t think they were lying.’
The DI glanced at the boys’ father. ‘I’m sure they weren’t, but kids are very imaginative. Playing in a graveyard, it’s going to put all sorts of ideas in their heads.’
‘They’re not supposed to play in here,’ said the father. ‘If we’ve told them once, we’ve told them a dozen times. Some of these old stones are dangerous. I’ve reported them, but you might as well not waste your breath.’
‘Maintaining the churchyard is the council’s responsibility, not the church’s,’ said Bannister. ‘Just as controlling wayward children is the responsibility of the parents.’
The kids’ dad squared his shoulders.
‘Cutbacks,’ said Sharples. ‘We
’re all having to deal with them. Oh champion, we’ve the ruddy undertakers here now.’
We all looked to see Larry Glassbrook striding up the path towards us. His jacket was pale brown corduroy, edged in lilac, and his black hair was swept up and back off his forehead. His blue shirt was open at the neck. He could not have looked less like an undertaker. His partner, Roy Greenwood, an older, taller, thinner man, discreetly dressed in a black suit, was at his side.
‘Anything I should know about?’ Larry spoke to the DI but nodded at me. ‘Flossie,’ he said. ‘You look hot. Been running?’
Sharples made an inarticulate grunt. ‘WPC Lovelady thinks our missing teenager could be hiding out in one of your coffins, Larry,’ he said.
‘Casket,’ Larry corrected. ‘Cedar with silver-gilt furniture. Lovely piece. Lined in yellow. I prefer blue and red with the silver and dark wood, but yellow was the old guy’s favourite colour.’
‘Mr Simmonds,’ said Roy Greenwood, with just a hint of reproof. ‘Mr Douglas Simmonds, aged seventy-three, passed away peacefully at home last Wednesday.’
‘Nobody’s touched that grave,’ said the sexton.
‘Is there any possibility, Mr Glassbrook?’ said Tom. ‘Can you talk us through what happens to a coffin when it’s closed? To put Florence’s mind at rest.’
Bannister audibly exhaled. The priest looked troubled.
‘Anything for Florence,’ said Larry. ‘The old boy’s been in that casket for four days now, since we carried out the embalming on Friday. The funeral was early yesterday morning, so we didn’t have a last viewing.’
‘We never do if the service is before eleven o’clock,’ his partner said. ‘It makes the whole business of getting the coffin into the hearse a bit rushed, and it unsettles the family too.’
I opened my mouth. Tom held up a finger to tell me to shut it again.
‘So no one’s looked in that coffin – I mean casket – since … since when exactly?’ Tom asked.
‘Since Sunday evening at five,’ Larry told us. ‘His widow came to see him with one of his sons. They spent about ten minutes and left.’
‘And then you nailed it shut?’
Larry winced, and then proceeded to explain to Tom and the others exactly how his caskets were sealed.
‘So nobody could have accessed it since then?’ Bannister seemed to think that settled the matter.
‘Patsy went missing on Sunday night,’ I said. ‘It was perfectly possible for someone to open it again after you closed it.’
‘Must have happened that way.’ Dwane.
‘They’d have to know how the mechanism worked.’ Larry ignored Dwane.
‘Or be smart enough to work it out,’ I said.
‘And they’d have to access our chapel of rest,’ said Greenwood, who was possibly the thinnest man I’d ever seen. His upper body seemed to curve forwards, as though his core wasn’t strong enough to keep him vertical all the way up. He had a way of leaning over people when he spoke to them.
‘I expect you keep your doors locked,’ Bannister said.
‘Always,’ Greenwood confirmed, in his low, toneless voice. ‘Unless we’re expecting to take delivery of remains. It wouldn’t do for someone to walk in unawares when we’re carrying out embalming procedures. And certainly the building and the yard are locked at night.’
‘If the kids really did hear screaming, that would mean Patsy was alive,’ Tom said to me. ‘How do you get a living kid into a coffin without her yelling blue murder?’
‘I didn’t hear a thing when I was filling it in,’ said Dwane.
‘Drug her,’ I answered back. ‘Hit her over the head with something. Trick her into thinking it was a joke.’
‘I told Rushton he’d regret hiring a woman,’ Bannister said. ‘Hysterics.’
‘She’ll be dead by now,’ said Dwane. ‘She might have hung on a few hours, from funeral to when t’ kids heard her, but not overnight. Might as well leave her where she is. No point disturbing a perfectly good mound.’
‘Right, I’m going back,’ the DI announced. ‘Lovelady, you and Butterworth can take up guard at both entrances to the churchyard for the next hour. No, make it two. Our being here will have set tongues wagging and I do not want sightseers and ghost-spotters hanging around upsetting the family.’
‘And I’m the one who has to clear up the mess,’ said Dwane.
Sharples set off back along the path. Bannister and the priest followed, then Larry and Roy Greenwood. As Larry turned to go, I caught a whiff of the aftershave he always wore. Old Spice. I’d seen new, boxed bottles of it at the bottom of the stairs, waiting to be carried up to the family’s bathroom.
‘Sir.’ I dodged round the other men to get close to Sharples. ‘We have to be sure. What if she’s down there and we just leave her? We can’t.’
Bannister muttered something unintelligible as Sharples heaved a heavy sigh. ‘I cannot carry out an exhumation without a Home Office licence. Isn’t that right, Father?’
‘I don’t see why we’re having to justify ourselves to the office junior,’ Bannister replied.
‘Sir, I’m not talking about an exhumation. Just moving a bit of earth and asking Larry to open the casket. We can have it exactly as it was in an hour.’
‘Who’s paying my overtime?’ asked Dwane.
‘I’m not listening.’ The DI carried on walking.
‘Sir, if we have reason to believe that life is in danger, the normal rules of access don’t apply.’
‘I’ll speak to you back at the station, Lovelady,’ Sharples snapped.
‘Boss, she has a point,’ said Tom. ‘We can rig up a tent. Wait till dark.’
‘No, we can’t wait,’ I said. ‘How much air is she likely to have left?’
‘None,’ said Dwane. ‘The lass is dead.’
‘Tom, how many calls that came in tonight reported seeing Patsy at the railway station?’ asked the DI.
‘Over a dozen,’ Tom had to admit.
‘Exactly. She left town on a train, and sooner or later we’ll find out where. Fannying around with the TV was bad enough, Lovelady. Don’t push it.’
‘Let it go, Florence,’ Tom said, as the others drove away. He took out his cigarettes, thought better of it and put them away again.
I looked down. Four and a half feet of loose, crumbly, damp soil. Dwane could dig it up in an hour.
‘I’ll walk you to the gate.’
Tom wasn’t suggesting we take a stroll together. He wanted me away from the grave. I moved slowly, fighting the gentle pressure on my arm that was pushing me along.
‘Who was that man with the priest?’ I asked.
‘Reg Bannister, a churchwarden. Member of the Rotary.’
‘And of the lodge?’
‘Who knows? Probably. Look, love, you need to keep your head down and your nose clean for a few days.’
We’d reached the path. People who’d watched the drama from the gate were starting to drift away and I wondered what Sharples had said to them.
‘There’s a lot of reporters in town,’ Tom went on. ‘You can’t get a room in the Black Dog, and that place hasn’t been full since the old Queen died. This reconstruction of yours – I’m not saying it was a bad idea, mind – it’s got them wound up.’
‘Publicity will help us find the kids,’ I said.
Tom stopped, so I did too. He still had hold of my arm. He turned to face me on the path.
‘Not everyone will see it that way. That meeting at the town hall tomorrow night is going ahead. After tonight, it’ll be packed. Well-meaning busybodies and trouble-making twats will be asking why the police aren’t doing enough to find the missing kids and the super will have no answers. So in twenty-four hours, we’ve gone from an uneasy calm, with most folk accepting that the kids have run away from home, to believing there’s a monster on the loose and the boys in blue are clueless. And when it all goes tits up, you’ll get the blame.’
‘That’s not fair.’
‘I didn’t say it was. You’re a soft target, Flossie – sorry, it just slipped out – because you’re new and young and just a lass. But you’re also smart and you’re not afraid to speak your mind. So those who might otherwise hold back will still go for you because no one wants to be shown up by a girl. Do you get what I’m saying?’
I did. I hadn’t just put my head above the parapet; I was tap-dancing on it.
‘Is that how you feel?’ I asked.
‘No, but I’m cleverer than most.’
I pulled a face. Tom was many things: good-looking, funny, charming when he wanted to be, but clever?
He took my arm again. ‘Let me give you a tip, Florence – it does no harm to let people think you’re a soft touch. You might want to give it a go.’
We’d reached the gate. He took his car keys out of his pocket and nodded to Randy, but before he turned away, he leaned close to me one last time. ‘The super’s under a lot of pressure, and you’ve just added to it. Promise me you won’t do anything stupid.’
I promised. I had to. He wasn’t going to leave until I did.
17
I was walking up the drive, a little after ten o’clock, when I heard a car engine.
‘Flossie.’ Sally Glassbrook smiled as she climbed out, but it was a tired smile, and her canvas midwifery bag was stuffed with bloodstained linen. ‘Any news?’
‘Nothing concrete, I’m afraid.’
‘Come on round.’ She pulled her heavier equipment bag from the car too. ‘I’ll make you a cuppa.’
I wanted nothing more than to get to bed, but I knew Sally was anxious, and so I followed her to the kitchen door, through the outer pantry and into the kitchen, to see Luna Glassbrook at the table, frowning at an exercise book.
From somewhere in the house came the sound of piano music. I thought I recognised Mozart, but the same short piece was being played repeatedly and it was hard to be sure.
‘Love, what are you doing still up?’
The Craftsman Page 6