‘It could mean that we’ve got another body out there,’ Falconer replied with a gallows smile.
‘And what about Bonnie Fletcher’s handbag?’ asked Carmichael.
‘Who knows? She may not have had one with her when she went missing, or it could be anywhere. Any ideas, come and talk to me.’ Falconer was now totally flummoxed. Carmichael had a good point. Where was Bonnie Fletcher’s handbag, assuming she had had one – and what woman would go anywhere without her trusty receptacle? – and why had it not been with the other ones? And whose was the green suede bag? Was there yet another corpse lurking underground somewhere on his patch, just waiting to be found? Another grim thought struck him then: why was there a gap of a year since the last known killing? Surely murderers didn’t go away for extended holidays?
While his mind was thus floundering, he had a call from the computer geek who had been assigned to Natalie Jones’ computer, and the man was impossible to interrupt. ‘That was quite a girl, the one that owned that computer. She was into all sorts on the internet, and the conversations on Facebook would make a whore blush. Someone told me her mother said she was a shy, retiring little flower, but not according to her emails. I’ll grant you that all the ‘doing’ seemed to be carried out by her friends, but this little madam was quite a voyeur. Whatever her friends did, she wanted to know in great detail – the whole nine yards. I could hardly believe what I was reading.
‘And as for the sites she looked at, she only just stayed this side of prosecution, the stuff they showed. If her mother knew what was going through her little darling’s mind she’d blow a fuse…’
Finally, Falconer managed to yell, ‘Stop!’ halting the whole office. ‘I’m afraid I should have called you off. The girl’s turned up, safe and well in Spain.’
‘You do surprise me. I’d have thought it would be in an alleyway somewhere, if she’d ever acted out some of her fantasies, and…’
‘The case is closed. Please leave the machine where it can be collected by a uniformed officer and returned to its owner, or at least her mother.’ The inspector abruptly ended the call before the caller blew out his earwax. There was a man who was keen on his job, and he wondered, suddenly, what the technician had on his laptop. Had he perhaps come across some old favourites?
‘Sir, did we have all the girls’ personal stuff brought back to the evidence room?’ asked Carmichael in the convenient silence.
‘We did, causing some problems, there’s so much of it.’
‘Would you mind if I just went and had a riffle through it. You never know what you’re going to turn up when you look at something with fresh eyes.’
‘Be my guest, Sergeant. Any new discovery would be greatly appreciated.’
Carmichael didn’t return to the office for over an hour, but when he did re-enter it, he was waving a newspaper aloft, an expression of triumph on his face. ‘Got something here, sir. We just didn’t think to look there before,’ he almost yodelled.
‘Is that the Carsfold Gazette you’re waving around?’
‘It is, sir, and look at this, circled in the lonely hearts column. “AS of Castle Farthing, looking for creative male, 25-40. GSOH. No strings. No children. Must be sensitive and affectionate”. It’s even got a phone number listed.’
‘Do you reckon that’s our Annie Symons?’
‘I did get it from one of the boxes we collected from the corner shop.’ Carmichael was clearly delighted with himself. ‘And I bet she got some funny calls. Why on earth do you think she put her real telephone number in?’
‘Naïveté?’ suggested Falconer.
‘Living dangerously?’ asked Tomlinson.
‘I think it was probably sheer innocence. None of the evidence about her suggests that she would welcome being inundated by phone calls from weirdos,’ countered Carmichael, indicating that he was a bit more with-it and more up to speed.
‘Can one of you check out the number in the ad while I phone the editor of the paper?’ Falconer requested.
David Porter himself answered the ringing phone and greeted Falconer like an old friend. ‘You’ve really got us run off our feet,’ he said. ‘Nothing like this has ever happened round here before, and we’ve never had so much news to report. Keep up the good work.’
‘I sincerely hope not, if that’s counted in corpses.’
‘Sorry, that was in rather dubious taste. What exactly can I do for you?’
‘Your lonely hearts column.’
‘What about it?’ The editor’s curiosity was definitely piqued.
‘You had an advert in it in your edition dated – hang on a minute. What was the date of that newspaper, Carmichael? – 8th May, 2009, from an AS of Castle Farthing. We think that might be one of our victims, but I want you to keep schtum about that and what I’m about to ask you – if you do I’ll give you a scoop on it.’
‘What is it you want me to do?’
‘Check through editions since then for these names: Melanie Saunders, Suzie Doidge, Marilyn Slade, and Bonnie Fletcher. That’s the women I need to check up on. As far as men go, I’d like you to check if adverts have been placed by any of the following: Timothy Driscoll, Colin Bridger, Michael Mortimer, Simeon Perkins, and George Covington.’
There was a large sigh at the other end of the phone. ‘And Uncle Tom Cobbley and all, I suppose. You’re just lucky I’ve got a work experience kid in at the moment, and I can spin any sort of excuse I like to justify such a search. Of course, you do realise that people don’t always use real names in these things, and sometimes, as you’ve discovered, just initials?’
‘Then that will just add extra delight to whoever is under your watchful eye for their time in work experience, won’t it?’
‘This could take some time,’ Porter said, with a touch of acid in his voice.
‘It’d be worth it, though, for a scoop, wouldn’t it?’
‘You blackmailing bastard, Harry.’
‘That’s me. Get back to me if you get any results.’
‘This had better be worth it,’ concluded the editor, ending the call with another audible sigh.
About half an hour later he had an internal call from Bob Bryant. ‘I’ve got a couple down at the desk come to hand in a handbag they’ve found. It’s in pretty poor shape, so it doesn’t look like it might have been mislaid yesterday, but they say there’s a Yale key in a little side pocket, so they thought someone might have missed it. I understand that you’re the “handbag man of the moment”.’
‘Cheeky swine,’ Falconer hissed, then raising his voice to its normal level, ‘I’ll come right down. I could do with stretching my legs. Pop them into an interview room until I get there.’
‘Will do. Thanks, Inspector.’
In interview room two he found what appeared to be a retired couple who introduced themselves as Mr and Mrs Greenacre. ‘We’ve handed in that handbag we found to that nice sergeant at the desk,’ Mrs Greenacre informed him.
‘That’s very public-spirited of you. Thank you very much. Could you tell me how and where you found it, please?’
‘We’re keen walkers, now we don’t work anymore. We like to keep fit, avoid the old man with the scythe and all that jazz,’ rambled her husband.
‘Anyway,’ she cut in, ‘We were having a little stroll out in that wooded section near Coldwater Pryors, and we saw the bag in a bramble bush.’
‘Not that it was easy to see, mind you. It was with it being winter and all that, and there being no leaves on it, that we could see it at all.’
‘There were still plenty of thorns,’ the woman informed Falconer. ‘It was me that fished it out. Look at my hands,’ she instructed him, holding them out to display a number of scratches.
‘I told you not to take those gloves out of your coat pocket this early in the year.’
‘But it was milder today.’
Falconer cleared his throat. He didn’t want this simple story to turn into a domestic. ‘And you looked inside it, did you?’
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‘That’s right.’ Mr Greenacre now took up the tale again. ‘There was nothing in the main body of the bag, but the wife noticed a little, almost concealed, pocket on the thin edge. She’s got right good eyesight, has the wife.’
‘And you looked inside that, did you?’ This was looking like it could turn into the verbal equivalent of pulling teeth.
‘That’s right, Inspector, we did. And there was this door key. Your desk sergeant took that as well.’
‘Did you just look, or did you take it out?’
‘Oh, we took it out to see if there was anything underneath it.’ So that made fingerprints more difficult then, the inspector thought wryly. But maybe this was the missing handbag of Bonnie Fletcher that had not been with the main cache?
‘If I got an officer to return with you to the area, could you identify exactly where you found it?’
‘Absolutely,’ the husband reassured him.
While one of the DCs took them away to identify the scene of the find, Falconer got the handbag sent off for DNA testing, and took the key himself. He had a good idea where this fitted, and he wanted to test his theory.
Leaving a message with Bob Bryant about where he was headed in case anyone needed him, he drove out to Shepford St Bernard. The key fitted perfectly into the lock on the front door of Robin’s Perch. It was Bonnie Fletcher’s bag after all, so that was that little mystery solved. He was right that no woman would go anywhere without her cosmetics and comb.
But, where had the cache come from? Why had this one been dumped somewhere different, and to whom did the stray bag belong? These and many other questions whirled in his mind, but the main one was, what on earth was the connection between the five – possibly six – victims?
They ranged from mid-twenties to early thirties, but this was all they seemed to have in common, although there must be a connecting factor. It was his job to find out what that was. He decided to corral his regular partners in their old office when he got back, and see if they could come up with something. The three of them had developed a kind of professional bond that he did not feel yet with the recently arrived DCs from other forces, and he would find it difficult to open himself up with such a large group.
On his return, he checked that Carmichael and Tomlinson were in the old meeting room and then slipped upstairs to where they had worked so harmoniously together for quite a while. In fact, it seemed as if Tomlinson had been there a lot longer than he had. He was an easy-going man with whom it was not difficult to get on, as long as he stopped his eulogies on his home county and didn’t have the bare-faced cheek to refer to the inspector again as ‘me old lover’. Collecting three chairs from the corridor, he placed them in the middle of their old space and slipped downstairs again to fetch the officers. If they could talk it through a bit, and he could have a professional chat with Honey this evening – together with AOB! – he might get somewhere.
As he put his head round the door, he heard the Market Darley DC’s voice sounding above the buzz of other voices. ‘And you should see the coast at Tintagel. It’s just breathtaking.’
‘Carmichael. Tomlinson. With me, now,’ he barked to get their attention and, as they mounted the stairs, he tackled the first of his bugbears. ‘Tomlinson, do you think you could quit the “Look at Life” you do on your native county? We understand it’s a very beautiful area, but so is this, and we don’t go on all the time extolling its virtues, do we? If we’ve never seen the Cornish countryside, I’m sure we’ll go and have a look one day. If we have, you’re probably preaching to the converted, and it can be a little bit of a strain.’
‘Sorry, sir. I’ll try to keep a lid on it. It’s just that I miss it so much.’
‘Then take some of your free time and have a drive through our highways, byways, and villages. I’m sure you’ll find a similar level of beauty, but just in a less dramatic way. This is really a lovely area, if you take the time to explore it. When the weather improves, take your girlfriend on some picnics. You’ll find yourself pleasantly surprised. For instance, have you ever examined the ancient castle ruins just to the north of the village where Carmichael lives?’
‘I didn’t even notice them when I went there,’ the DC admitted.
‘I expect your mind was on what you intended to do once you arrived. Take a while and just walk round them. They’re lovely.’
‘They are that,’ confirmed the DS. ‘Sometimes I take the dogs there instead of into the woods. They love chasing round the old lumps of stone and the crumbling walls. And there’re some really lovely remains of thirteenth-century gothic windows.’
‘Thanks for the tip,’ replied Tomlinson. It hadn’t occurred to him that he hadn’t really given the area a chance to shine, and he had certainly found the village of Castle Farthing picturesque. ‘We’ll start there and work our way outwards, me old lover.’
Falconer was not sure to which of them this remark was addressed, but immediately jumped on it, as it was his only other source of annoyance with this officer. ‘And around here, we don’t refer to anyone as “me old lover”, let alone superior officers. Surnames or ranks will be fine in the workplace. Anything else will be by personal arrangement with that individual. OK?’
‘Sorry about that. Old Cornish habit,’ replied the constable, and then blushed as he realised he had mentioned his home county yet again.
Once sat in the bare office on the plain wooden chairs, Falconer asked them if they had any theories on why the victims had been chosen or who might have killed them.
Carmichael was the first to offer up anything. ‘We sort of know it wasn’t promiscuity. The only one who seemed a bit that way was Suzie Doidge, because the woman in the other flat said she was a bit of a goer.’
‘The only visitor to Annie Symons’ address we can be sure of is Colin Bridger with this daft tale about writing a children’s story together,’ chipped in Tomlinson.
‘Although we do have the manuscript to prove it was written,’ Falconer counselled them with caution, ‘albeit there is no evidence to confirm that they had compiled it as a joint effort.’
‘It could’ve been just a smokescreen for whatever else was going on,’ suggested the DC. ‘And Marilyn Slade didn’t seem to socialise much.’
‘Bonnie Fletcher was going out on a date the night she disappeared. Have we found out who that was with yet? I know she was very cagey with Ms Warwick.’ It was Falconer’s turn to add something.
‘And that Melanie Saunders was applying for a live-in job,’ ventured Carmichael. ‘If she’d had any of those in the past, then we need to get someone on to her employment record to see if she might have been having flings with male members of staff.’
‘Or even female members,’ added the inspector daringly, smiling at Carmichael’s distressed face at the very idea. ‘But, good idea, Sergeant. Now, what about the possible killers? Let’s start with George Covington.’
‘A bit unlikely, isn’t he, sir?’ asked Carmichael. ‘I mean, he’s been at The Fisherman’s Flies for years, and he’s never looked at all menacing to me.’
‘You’re not a young, attractive woman, are you? That makes a difference.’
‘But surely he’s too old,’ opined Tomlinson with the callowness of youth.
‘On the contrary, I’ve been told you’re never too old,’ Falconer advised him, simply to be contrary. ‘I shall let you know about that when I hit eighty,’ he added, with unusual levity. Looking at his watch, he suddenly gasped. ‘Good Lord, look at the time. I’d completely lost touch with it. I’m expecting a visitor tonight, and I’m sure you two have things to do too. Put your thinking caps on, and we’ll have another chat tomorrow. I’m just sorry that this session couldn’t last longer.’
At this, the inspector jumped to his feet and made a hasty exit, rubbing his hands together with glee. ‘Whatever’s got into him, Neil?’ asked Carmichael. ‘I know he’s been acting a bit strangely lately. I have, myself, but my wife’s just given birth to twins, and that’s
only to be expected. But, what’s eating him? I’ve never known him like this before.’
‘Methinks our revered senior officer is, perhaps, getting his leg over, Davey,’ suggested Tomlinson, also taking the opportunity to slip on to first name terms.
‘No! Never! He simply wouldn’t do that.’ Carmichael was scandalised, but did not object to the use of his forename, especially as it wasn’t the one he had been given at his baptism.
‘And who exactly was this visitor he was so anxious to get home to?’ Tomlinson wasn’t giving up that easily.
‘Surely not Dr Honey Dubois? I thought he was going to give that a rest while he concentrated on this case.’
‘Did you actually believe him when he came in a couple of hours late the other morning, and claimed he had forgotten to tell us about a dental appointment?’
‘I don’t believe I was in that day – but it’s impossible that he would have had an appointment and not have told us about it in advance, or at least rung in,’ Carmichael agreed.
‘And have you seen that smug smile on his face when he thinks nobody’s looking?’
‘I have noticed he seems rather more cheerful, but I thought that that was maybe me thinking that the whole world was happy at the moment. I have been a bit out of it.’
‘You couldn’t help that, Davey. By the way, have you and your wife settled on any names yet for your new additions?’
‘It would seem that Persephone and Apollo are the flavours of the month with Kerry.’
‘Blimey! How has she managed to swing that one?’
‘By reminding me of the other first names in my family. You don’t want to know, although I’ll let you into a little secret: my given names are actually Ralph and Orsino. I’m Davey by choice.’
‘How could you possibly disagree with her, with monikers like that? So, to round things off, do you think the old man’s on the nest?’
Although bristling at that way of referring to what was, in fact, their senior officer, Carmichael had to agree that there were certainly signs that something was afoot to make him that happy.
Shadows and Sins (The Falconer Files Book 13) Page 17