by Jane Adams
It was still raining. Looked set to last the night and, Mike knew, it would take a good morning of hot sun before he could let anyone down to look at what they’d found.
He was aware, dimly, that Flint’s tone had changed. Mike realized that his period of indulgent pontification was over and that he should give him at least a modicum of attention once more.
Flint was asking what he planned to do next.
‘Depends on the weather,’ Mike told him. ‘Meantime, we’ve sent the kid’s clothes to forensics. When they’ve done we’ll get the Cassidys to make a positive I.D. I’ve not much doubt though, that they’re Sara Jane’s.’
‘This shrink any help?’ Flint asked abruptly. It took Mike a second or two to realize he meant Dr Lucas.
‘Matter of fact she’s been very co-operative,’ Mike told him. Flint looked suspicious.
‘Just remember, Mike, this is business. I don’t interfere with what my people do off duty, but she’s part of an investigation.’
Mike looked coldly at him. So news of his dinner with Maria Lucas had reached Flint? There was a saying that within the station a flea couldn’t fart without everyone getting wind of it.
‘It’s Doctor Lucas’s patient that’s part of the investigation,’ he said quietly. ‘Not Doctor Lucas.’
Flint snorted. ‘Come off it, Mike. Doctor-patient relationships and all that. If you think this Lucas woman won’t protect her own and Mrs Maltham’s interests, you’re far more of a fool than I’ve been led to believe.’
* * *
Saturday morning was bright. Clear skies and hot sunshine from early in the day. Perhaps, Mike thought, the storm gods felt they’d persecuted him enough and were willing now to give him an even break.
With luck, by noon, the ground would have dried enough for SOCO to make another attempt at the site.
He drove out to Tan’s hill as soon as he thought there would be a chance that the teams, set to be there from nine, would have had the opportunity to do something, and arrived just after eleven. He stood for some time at the top of the hill, watching the forensic teams do their work. The team leader had glanced up and nodded acknowledgement at him a few moments before, but he didn’t go down. Mike was realistic, experienced enough to know that at this stage he could only be in the way.
Instead, he watched, feeling as always the strange sense of unreality as these meticulous assessors of the breakdowns in other people’s lives went about their business, photographing, grid marking, carefully cutting back the outer layers of foliage after recording the position and characteristics of each one.
Mike had once had the opportunity to watch archaeologists at work. This was very like that time. The slow, unhurried attention both groups gave to their work. Their seeming isolation from the schedules and concerns of the rest of the world. Mike sighed, feeling a little impatient, spread his raincoat on the ground — he’d come slightly more prepared this time — and sat down to drink flask coffee and wait for something to happen.
It was more than three hours before it did.
Three hours of watching them dismantle the bramble patch piece by piece. Three hours of photographs, of pegged references marked out on the increasingly exposed ground. Of soil samples taken where slightly discoloured patches were disturbed.
They found his scrap of ribbon hanging with its pathetic little tail of blonde hair and he watched as it was photographed in situ, then snipped, complete with the twig it was attached to, bagged up ready for testing.
The entire briar patch had been removed now and Mike could just glimpse the entrance to the hidey hole. He moved himself further down the hill, perched somewhat precariously about half-way down and watched in fascination as a female member of the team crawled into the space now revealed. Like a green cave, Cassie had said, and she was right. It was — though Mike was confounded as to how — twenty years on, and it was still there.
He ducked his head down in an attempt to peer inside. He could see the woman, a dim outline on hands and knees, but it was difficult to make out details. Even exposed as it now was, the gap beneath the hedge was still a twilit area, a place of shadows and naked earth. Perhaps it was not so surprising that it had been so well preserved. No light meant nothing was growing, and the natural outward curve that the main branches of the hawthorn made around the womb-like gap had prevented a natural filling in by its own offshoots.
‘Pure fluke,’ Mike said aloud. Then wondered. Could someone else have been aware of this place? Kept it clear? Perhaps the woman whose body they’d found on the hill, or others like her who’d welcome any shelter.
He could see the woman scraping soil samples now, using a grid to mark where each came from, reminding him again of the archaeological dig he had seen.
She passed them out to one of her companions, taking from him in return something that looked like a wire probe. Carefully, she began to push the instrument into the ground. One area seemed to have attracted her particularly. She took more samples, then, taking something else — it looked like a bent spoon to Mike — began to remove a little more of the top soil from that point.
Mike edged closer. It was clear from the sudden tension and the way that work had ceased all around her that the woman had found something. With the delicate precision of a surgeon the woman excised her find from the hard-crusted, loose earth. A tiny bone.
At first Mike sat down again and began to relax. Some small animal had died in there, he figured. The woman had marked her find and retreated from the hole, placing her find carefully in a marked bag.
Mike moved excitedly as the team leader beckoned to him.
‘It’s a bone from a finger,’ he said. ‘A child’s finger. My guess is we have a body down there.’
Chapter 18
The news of the child’s skeleton screamed at Mike from the morning headlines. He threw the papers aside after only the briefest of glances and slumped back in his chair feeling thoroughly deflated. After spending most of the previous day observing the careful excavation, seeing to the reports and becoming more cognizant with the post-mortem of the woman they’d found on the hill he’d returned to the station to find that he no longer headed the investigation.
‘The child’s been found,’ Flint told him. ‘We’ve been told to hand over to the experts.’ His tone had been wry, disapproving, but accepting.
Mike had argued for a full hour, but to no effect. The fact was the directive had come from higher up than Flint and the most he could do was to approve Croft’s secondment to the murder enquiry.
‘They’re keen to have you, Mike, I’ve been told to make that very clear.’ Mike had looked askance at him. ‘It’s a policy decision. Best use of available manpower.’ Mike stared angrily at the office wall. He’d not realized just how strong his personal involvement in this had become. How much he considered it his investigation.
‘The other thing, Mike, is that they want to play down the more . . . esoteric elements of the case. It doesn’t look good, you know, for us to seem like we’re chasing ghosts.’ Mike had laughed aloud at that, at the irony of it. ‘But that’s just what we damn well have been doing, isn’t it, sir?’ He continued to laugh softly as if at a private joke.
Flint gave him an anxious look. ‘Mike,’ he said quietly, ‘maybe you’re pushing yourself too hard on this one, getting too involved.’ He paused, then said almost gently, ‘You’ve leave due to you, why don’t you take it? Get yourself out of this for a while.’
Mike turned sharply to look at him. ‘That official policy, too, is it?’
Flint shook his head. ‘No, Mike, my personal recommendation. No one says you have to take it . . .’ He left the unsaid ‘but’ in the air between them and went on, ‘I think you’re too involved. Too close.’ He paused again, then added almost casually, ‘Tynan got too involved you know. He had a good future ahead of him, but the Ashmore case finished all that. He couldn’t let go of it, continued the investigation in his own time even after it had officially been shelved
. His ideas became, well, let’s just say a little strange.’ He looked meaningfully at Mike, who said nothing, just returned his gaze to the cracked and peeling paintwork of the office wall.
‘It would be a waste for the same thing to happen to you. Take a break.’
Mike had continued to stare for a few moments longer, the paintwork with its network of cracks and discoloured patches left by decaying sticky tape suddenly deeply absorbing. Then he shook his head. ‘I’m not John Tynan, sir,’ he said. ‘Though I’ve learnt to respect his reasons.’ He hesitated. ‘It’s hard to let go when there’s a kid involved.’ Flint nodded. ‘Sure it is, Mike, but there’s still such a thing as objectivity.’ He frowned then added in a more conciliatory tone. ‘Look, the team’s being assembled, pulled together from all over the division. The first major briefing won’t be until Monday.’
‘Monday?’ Mike was surprised. Generally murder investigations were a little faster off the mark.
Flint shrugged. ‘Earliest reports indicate the child’s body has been in the ground for quite a time. We’re still running preliminary checks on the woman, trying to get an I.D. on her, there’s not much to be done here. If you won’t take leave then you’ll at least take your Sunday.’
* * *
So here he was. Sunday morning, a free day ahead of him to use as he liked and already bored to tears.
The telephone, piercing and insistent, broke through his thoughts. It was Bill Enfield. Mike felt his spirits lift a little.
‘Good morning to you. Enjoying your break, you jammy bugger?’
‘Hey, that should be you jammy bugger, sir.’
‘Sorry, officers on off days don’t count,’ Bill told him.
Mike laughed. ‘So what can I do for you?’ he asked.
‘You can accept Rose’s invitation to lunch.’
‘You’re not working?’
‘I don’t live at the office, not quite. No, I’ve been seconded to this team of experts we’ve got coming in, same as you, they don’t need the likes of me till morning. Not that I’m grumbling mind, my last three Sundays off I’ve ended up going in so I’m enjoying it while I can.’
‘Well, are you sure you want me intruding?’
‘Don’t talk so bloody wet, Mike. Rose wants to meet you and John’s already on his way. We eat at one-thirty.’ Mike heard the phone click as Bill broke the connection, smiled to himself. Well, it was far better than spending a Sunday alone and if John Tynan was going to be there . . . Briefly, he reminded himself that he was meant to be resting, forgetting all about the Ashmore case, and Cassie Maltham and the unknown woman, and the child they had found. He stopped thinking about it for the ten minutes it took him to shave, an activity he’d never quite managed to share with other concerns, and then forgot all about forgetting, let his imagination have full rein as he drove the few miles to Bill Enfield’s house.
Tynan’s car was already there and through an open window Mike could hear him laughing at something. He heard too a woman’s voice, caught the slow, soft burr of the local accent as she spoke.
It was Rose who answered his knock at the door, Bill following her close behind, making the introduction.
‘I’m so pleased to meet you,’ she told him. ‘Bill says you’re a big improvement on that last one. Now come on in.’
Her directness surprised him, he caught Bill’s look over his wife’s shoulder and laughed. ‘Thank you,’ he said, ‘and thank you as well for the invitation. It’s very kind.’
‘Not a bit of it,’ Rose said, smiling broadly at him. ‘It’s nice to have company. Don’t get enough of it these days, what with the family grown up and moved away. Now go and make yourself comfortable.’
Mike watched her as she marched back into the kitchen, then looked back at Bill. Like enough to be book-ends, he thought. Rose didn’t have quite Bill’s roundness, but she certainly seemed to share his temperament. He grinned contentedly and allowed himself to be ushered into the sitting room.
John was already well ensconced, surrounded by the Sunday papers.
‘We’ve made it to the front page two weeks in a row,’ he said, reaching over and dumping the whole pile into Mike’s lap.
‘I know,’ he replied. ‘I saw some of them earlier on.’
‘We’ve been told to handle this one carefully. Play down the weird bits,’ Bill added. ‘Though how in the world we’re meant to do that, God alone knows.’
‘Any word on the skeleton?’ Mike asked.
Bill shook his head. ‘Read the papers and you’ll have about all I’ve been told. Seems the age, estimated height and the like are the same as the Ashmore girl, but the dental records don’t match. No, this is another one.’
‘Another?’ Mike was startled, he’d been certain that the bones had to be Suzie Ashmore. The thought that there might be another body hadn’t crossed his mind.
‘There’s a lot of speculation that the bones’ve been in the ground more than twenty years too, first thing tomorrow we start sifting missing-persons reports from before the Ashmore case.’
Mike shook his head in disbelief. ‘And they said our connection was tenuous.’
‘We might be getting ourselves a geriatric murderer at this rate,’ Bill commented. ‘Or, of course, there may be no connection at all. Murders do happen independently,’ he added.
‘Yes,’ Mike said, ‘of course they do. Maybe Flint’s right, I’ve been looking at this thing so closely I can’t see the wood for the proverbial trees.’
Tynan laughed. ‘In this case it should be the proverbial Hawthorn bushes. How are the hands?’
Mike glanced down. ‘Sore,’ he said.
‘You got off lightly. Bill was telling me the two constables helping you on Friday had to get themselves tetanus jabs.’
Bill nodded confirmation. ‘We’ve got the pair of them walking round with bruised backsides,’ he said.
Mike laughed, then asked, ‘So do we know who’s heading this thing then? Flint wasn’t able to tell me.’
‘Far as I know it hasn’t been confirmed yet. Be either Cunningham or Peters.’ He grinned knowingly at Mike. ‘Either way you’ll be all right, Mike, there’s neither one of them likes scrambling about in the mud. Desk junkies the pair of them.’
Mike said nothing, accepting Bill’s assessment. He had, after all, been around long enough to know; it was Mike that was the new kid.
Tynan was bending to scrabble for something beside his chair. He straightened, producing a stack of files and cuttings’ books already familiar to the others.
‘Bill told me on the phone,’ he said, ‘about this body maybe not being Suzie’s. It got me thinking.’ He rummaged in one of the files, withdrew a sheaf of notes and some scraps of paper. ‘Man called Emsbury was vicar then. He’s retired now but I’ve checked, he’s still living in the area. Well, at the time Suzie Ashmore went missing I got to know him quite well.’ He shuffled the notes further, sifted out what he wanted and handed them to Mike. ‘Emsbury was a stranger round here, in other words, he’d only been around for the best part of a decade.’ He grinned at Mike. ‘He was something of a local history buff, liked the local legends and so on.’
‘Plenty of those,’ Bill commented.
‘Certainly are,’ Tynan confirmed. ‘Most relevant to us, though, is something that happened about twenty years before Emsbury came here. There was a child. Little girl called Emma Cooper, eleven years old, disappeared without trace. I’ll let you guess where from.’ He paused, looked thoughtfully at Mike who was reading his way through Tynan’s cramped, hand-written notes. ‘I’d dismissed it as coincidence really. This little Cooper girl, rumours have it she was unhappy at home, father hit the bottle then hit the kids, you know the scenario, so when she went everyone just thought she’d run away.’
Mike looked thoughtful. ‘Worth looking into if the date’s right,’ he said, ‘but it was fifty years ago, going to be very hard to prove.’ He looked again at the notes, then at the photocopies Tynan had taken of peri
od news reports, comparing them to the Ashmore case and the disappearance of Sara Jane Cassidy. Two children, the reports said, Emma and a friend, a child of the same age, playing on the Greenway. Emma had run on ahead after the dog, her friend said she’d seen Emma turn the corner around Tan’s hill, had begun to run after her then she’d slipped and fallen down. When she got up again and went after her friend she couldn’t be found.
‘It doesn’t say,’ Mike commented, ‘whether there was a time lapse between the child falling over and her going after her friend again.’
‘No,’ John agreed, ‘it doesn’t, but it makes you wonder.’
‘I remember it,’ Bill said unexpectedly. ‘I was only a kid at the time, but I remember it happening. They arrested the father, didn’t they?’
Tynan nodded. ‘Yes, but the body was never found and there was no real proof. He’d been heard to threaten the child and everyone knew he had a violent temper, but then he’d apparently been heard to threaten just about anyone who got in his way when he’d been drinking.’ He shrugged. ‘The case was never closed, just shelved, like the Ashmore affair.’
Mike laughed shortly. ‘I can see the delight on Flint’s face if we tell him we want to re-open an unsolved fifty-year-old case,’ he said.
‘Well, one thing’s for sure,’ Bill added. ‘Cassie Maltham wasn’t even born then. No link that way at least.’
‘Well, that’s something to be glad about,’ Tynan affirmed. ‘I take it you’re still looking to connect her with Sara Jane?’
Mike shook his head. ‘I really can’t say. It’s possible. What does seem likely is that she knew, subconsciously at least, that the child could be there. And this woman, the one from her dream, how she ties in to all this . . .’
‘There was an itinerant seen close to where the children were playing when Suzie was lost,’ Tynan reminded him.
Mike nodded. ‘Yes, but does it seem possible it would be the same one? That was twenty years ago. Our mystery woman would be maybe in her late-twenties, early-thirties at most. Would Cassie, even if she saw the woman then, even if it was the same woman, would she be able to make up the twenty years difference and recognize her as such?’