Witchmoor Edge

by Mike Crowson

It had taken a long time for Millicent to get to bed the night before, and then she'd been a while getting off to sleep. She had dreamed of things faintly connected with her reading and the case and she had breakfasted and driven to work still thinking about them.

  Before going to bed she had been reading a book loaned to her by Tobias N'Dibe. It was called Footsteps in the Psychic Wilderness and was by the man who for twenty-two years had been in charge of the US Army's Operation Stargate into Remote Viewing. The man who wrote it had a scientific background and training but an open-minded approach, which led him to challenge the accepted scientific world view. He had come to the conclusion that Quantum Physicists who postulated that the whole universe was connected, at a deeper level, in a somehow holographic way were, at the very least, on the right track.

  Millicent had not realised that the negative of a hologram is just a pattern of interlinking circles, like ripples on a still pond when you throw in two pebbles at once. Once a laser is shone at the same angle as the original, a 3D holographic image of the subject is projected. She had vaguely known how the image was produced but had definitely not realised that every part of the negative contains every part of the image: if you take a holographic picture of an apple and cut off a corner of the negative, you don't have the corner of a picture of an apple - when you shine a laser through it, an image of the whole apple is projected.

  What the writer of Footsteps in the Psychic Wilderness, a man called Dale Graff, suggested was that, if creation really is a holographic-type projection, then Millicent was part of that projection and, as a part of the holograph, she contained every part of it, and that is a mind-set shattering idea.

  What Remote viewing (or, by inference, any other psychic skill like dowsing or precognition) is doing she thought, as she drove abstractedly but carefully through the rush hour traffic, is tapping into what all of us already know.

  The implications of this are shatteringly unsettling and most of us refuse to believe this version of reality. Whatever Millicent's logical mind thought, however, it is an inescapable scientific fact that most of reality is an illusion.

  Take this car, she thought. It is composed of atoms of metal and various other things. The biggest part of any atom is the nucleus. If a single atom was the size of my car, the nucleus - and that's the biggest part - would be the size of one of these specks of dust dancing in the morning sunlight. The illusion of a solid atom only comes because that nucleus is vibrating so fast the whole atom appears solid. In reality any atom is mostly just space!

  Millicent reflected that the leading edge of quantum physics was uncovering a reality so strange and full of illusions that it was rather arrogant of any scientist to say that any faculty however strange was actually impossible.

  It was only when she turned into the secure yard behind Witchmoor Edge police station that she even turned her mind to the case and the briefing she planned to start with.

  Chief Inspector Cooke came up to the incident suite and settled himself into the circle of chairs, which the whole team joined. Millicent again had PC Downing join the circle, with easy get out to the switchboard in case she needed to respond to the phone. The civilian staff also joined the meeting. As Millicent said, it was much more efficient if everybody knew where everything fitted into the investigation.

  "Right," she said. "We have an identity for the body in the ruins of Cartwright's Wharf and we've found the Porsche." She explained the raid of the evening before and Koswinski's confession.

  "I want Tommy Hammond to take statements and charge him, as soon as this meeting's over," she said. "Then you can arrange to have him sent to Bradford, so that they can interview him about his previous dealings with Stone's Autos. We have him on car theft and the CPS can decide whether there’s anything over the Oyewinde affair. I think, on balance, that he didn't have anything to do with fire itself. Failure to report a body is an offence against the one of the acts surrounding the coroner, maybe complicated by the fact that he may have believed they killed Hunter. I think well leave that to the CPS as well."

  She turned to the matter of the car. "The vehicle is with forensic now. Bradford Division promised a thorough going over as a high priority. They were doing it last night, so I expect the preliminary report any time now. That concludes what I have to contribute: Tony, How did the door to door around Knowles's house go?"

  DC Gibbs shifted in his chair and flipped open his notebook. "We didn't have a lot of luck," he said, "A lot of people were away on holiday and most were out on the Saturday anyway. However, a Mr. Peters - Norman Peters - was mowing his front garden and saw a BMW with two men in it pull up outside his house and stay for about half an hour just after half past twelve. He remembered the time, because his wife rang up about twelve thirty from shopping and having her hair done, saying she wouldn't be back till 1.30 or so. He decided he'd just time to mow the grass, which is why he went out there. He saw the BMW arrive."

  "Shields and Leverett?" asked Millicent.

  "It's about where they claimed to be, at the time they said they were there. We don't have a specific identification of either the vehicle or the occupants, but it is the right make and colour."

  "It sounds as if Shirley Hunter was lying and Knowles telling less than the whole truth," Millicent observed. "I've got to see a Mr. and Mrs. Hutchins today and see if we can finally nail the story."

  At that point a uniformed officer came in. "Desk Sergeant sent these up," he said, holding out a file and two evidence bags. "Some one brought them over from Bradford Division saying they were very urgent."

  Millicent took the files and plastic bags.

  "What've they sent you?" Cooke asked.

  Millicent held up the bags, one in each hand. "A letter addressed to Simon Hunter," she said, "... and a syringe. Well, well." She put down the two bags and opened the file.

  "Short and sweet," she said. "The car had been re-sprayed silver and cleaned. There were no prints other than Stone's people and it seemed to have been given a good general clean, but they slipped up and missed the driver's side door pocket, where forensic found the letter. The syringe had slipped down into the spare wheel compartment. Text of the letter is here."

  She read from the file.

  "9th August

  Dear Simon,

  I managed to get the stuff you wanted. I'll meet you Saturday in the usual place around 2pm, unless I hear otherwise.

  Rosie."

  There was a stunned silence as everyone considered this new information.

  "Well," Millicent said, breaking the silence. "That syringe is going for analysis so urgently you wouldn't believe it, and we're bringing in Rosie O'Connor for questioning as soon as this meeting is over. Tony and Lucy, you can go pick her up, but I'll sit in on the interview if I'm back in time. DC Bright, Matthew, you can come with me to interview Mr. and Mrs. Hutchins and then see Shirley Hunter again. Gary," she continued turning to DC Goss, "I want you to take this syringe to forensic and stand over them while they tell you what was in it and whose prints are on it. Then come running back with the report. Stand over them and breathe down their necks if you have to."

  She turned to Cooke. "Could you phone as well, tell them how urgent it is and that Goss is on his way over and will wait?"

  "They won't like it," Cooke said. "But I'll do it anyway," he added hastily as he caught Millicent's eye. He was well pleased with his Detective Inspector, but she could sometimes be a cross between a bulldozer and a road roller. It was best to get out of her way if you could!

  "Okay," Millicent said, rather like an American football coach ending a time out, "let's go, go, go and get on with it. This complicated little crime's starting to crack open."

  DC Bright pulled the car up outside 15 Coldicott Crescent and followed Millicent to up the drive to the Hutchins' house. There was a low hedge over a waist height stone wall, but the ground rose quite steeply behind it, so anyone washing the car would have had quite a reasonable view of the Crescent. Millicent tu
rned and looked around. The Hunters' house was on the other side of the crescent and Mrs Hutchins' must have been standing on the edge of the lawn to see their drive at all. Perhaps she had been. Millicent turned again, walked up to the front door and rang the bell.

  A man of about fifty of fifty-five, dressed in casual trousers and a short-sleeved shirt came to the door.

  "Mr. Hutchins?"

  "Yes."

  Millicent showed him her warrant card. "Detective Constable Bright, here, was making door to door enquiries earlier in the week, in connection with the murder of Simon Hunter. He spoke to your wife, but you were away at a conference."

  "That's right," Mr. Hutchins agreed. "I've been at a conference for Trustees and Board Members of Housing Associations. However, I did read of the murder. Spoke to my wife, you say?"

  "We were trying to establish a timetable of events for last Saturday. Find out what time Mr. Hunter was last seen alive and so on. Mrs. Hutchins said she saw him drive out of his drive while you were washing your car, but she wasn't sure of the time." Millicent smiled her most friendly smile. "We were hoping you might be able to remember the time."

  "You'd better come in a moment while I think about it properly," Mr. Hutchins said, holding the door open. He led them into the front room, overlooking the front garden."

  "Let's see," he ruminated as they sat down. "I generally come in and listen to the repeat of the News Quiz on BBC Radio Four at 12.30, so I try to finish whatever I'm doing by then. Mrs. Hutchings usually gets a snack ready at that time and we have it listening to the one o’clock news. I'm such a creature of habit that I can say with reasonable confidence that I was washing the car between twelve and twelve thirty, because I put the bucket and sponge away and came in just in time for the programme."

  "Did you see Mr. Hunter leave?" Millicent asked

  "My wife commented on his shooting out onto the Crescent. I looked up just in time to see his car pass at very high speed."

  "Was he always a fast driver?"

  "It was a fast car and he often drove it fast and carelessly, I thought," Hutchins replied carefully. "On this occasion. My wife thought he was chasing Mrs. Hunter. She left about five minutes before, maybe less. Now, I did see her. I was washing the rear end of the car. I could just see their drive as she pulled out in her little red car and drove past our driveway."

  "What was Mrs. Hutchins doing while you were washing the car?" Millicent asked, though she knew the answer from DC Bright's notes.

  "My wife is a gardening fanatic. From about half past eleven on she had been mowing the lawn with our motor mower. By the time I was half way through washing the car she was finished mowing and just stood watching me."

  "What made her think Mr. Hunter might be chasing his wife? Did they quarrel a lot?"

  "I think she was just joking on this occasion but, yes, the Hunters were always arguing noisily and he could be violent as well. I've seen him hit her."

  "Well, thank you Mr. Hutchings," Millicent said. "You've been very helpful. I'll get these notes typed up into a statement and someone will arrange to call and get it signed."

  To DC Bright she said, "I think we'd better have another talk to Mrs. Hunter before we go back to the station, so we'd better get a move on."