Daisy Chains

by Barbara Gaskell Denvil

  She took the lead, choosing the long winding descent down the slope, a path which was more like a deer track but as gentle as a breeze with no threat of jogging the hillside or creating a steep descent. She stopped twice, picking bluebells, as Sylvia caught up with her. Harry was close at Sylvia’s back, ready for rescue or to stop a fall. But Sylvia did not fall. Although simply ground earth, the pathway was ground with pebbles and small grassy tufts. There was little chance of slipping.

  Dancing a little ahead, Tracy called back, “Not out of breath yet?”

  “I’m not that feeble,” Sylvia said. Then, “But I may not feel that way when I have to climb back up to the car.”

  “I’ll carry you,” grinned Harry.

  Sylvia sniggered. “You might just as well carry the car down to get me.” The bluebells grew thick in one flat clearing where the sun flashes brighter with little interruption. Sylvia thought of Ruby and wondered if she could take her back a cluster, but decided that clutching her crutch was hard enough without filling the other hand with flowers. Then she saw Tracy had picked some. “Are you getting those for yourself?” she called. “Or could I share a couple?”

  “Have the lot,” Tracy yelled back, and carried on picking.

  “I think I’d better stop here,” Sylvia sighed. “If I sit on that nice round rock, I can get enough energy back for the return. I’d hoped to come further but never mind. I’m completely drained. Leave me that bottle of water, will you?”

  “You really think I’ll let you sit here alone with that monster around?” Harry frowned as he handed over her own bottle which he’d been carrying for her. It was no longer freshly cold, but that didn’t stop her drinking half of it and getting the hiccups. “So I’ll wait with you, then we can walk back to the car together.”

  “Go on without me,” she insisted. “Bloody Sullivan isn’t going to come leaping out from behind the trees, is he now! And I have my phone handy. It screeches when I press the button, and phones 999. You go and find the shed. That’s what you’re so good at.”

  “Very little hope of that.” Harry began to descend the next slightly steeper pathway down. He caught up with Tracy, but he started to regret the choice of direction when the hillside began to dip into a deep crevice. “I’m eighty-one, for goodness sake, and a bloody idiot,” he said, puffing loudly. “I like to think I’m fit. Well yes, fit for my age. But I should have stopped with Sylvia.”

  “You just shouldn’t have come,” Tracy grinned. “But look, if we wind that other way, it’s just a hop and a skip.”

  “Hopping and skipping aren’t really my forte.”

  She was down before him, and, delighted, swung in a circle, arms outstretched. Some of the bluebells dropped their bells. “Look, it’s lovely down here. There’s a big ledge and a load of little baby trees all poking up between the mummy trees. They’re birches or beeches or something aren’t they?”

  And then she stopped, quite suddenly, as if she had run into a wall. Harry was still several feet up the path. Tracy pointed but didn’t call.

  Peering from a little above, Harry asked, “What? A complete castle with a drawbridge over the moat?”

  She put a finger to her lips, mouthing, “Hush.”

  New urgency and new excitement quickened Harry’s climb. He stumbled beside Tracy and stared at her quivering finger and its bitten nail. They both saw the cottage snuggled beneath the branches. A dribble of ivy closed off the only tiny window. The door, an old lightweight coupling of planks, hung ajar.

  Inside was only black shadow. Tracy hovered outside. She whispered, grabbing Harry’s arm, “Dad wouldn’t be here. It’s too little. He said it was a comfy little place, well – this is little, but how can it be comfy? It’s just one room big enough for a couple of spades and a pickaxe.””

  “You stay here,” Harry whispered back.

  He owned no gun and had not thought to carry a knife, but he picked up a fallen log from the ground and kept it in a tight grip. It wasn’t mighty enough to kill a killer, but it might knock someone from his path if used with accurate aim and admirable energy.

  Staying two steps outside, Harry leaned forward and pushed the door further open. There was no sound except the groan of the hinges, and he could still not see a thing inside. So he risked one step nearer.

  Finally, kicking the door fully open, Harry stepped inside, his stick raised. He cursed himself for not having brought a torch. There was a good one in the car. There was a knife in the car too. But in spite of his long ago meeting with Lionel Sullivan in the horror shed, he had not expected any success this day – nor any other. He still didn’t, but he had to see. After all, the police had already combed the area and discovered nothing. It was the old crying wolf nonsense, positive you wouldn’t find anything but going off to look for it anyway – and then – lo and behold -------

  “I’m behind you,” Tracy said. “And I’ve got matches.”

  Harry wouldn’t enter the cottage. One step into the doorway already seemed unwise, but no one jumped him, and only Tracy spoke. He heard the scratch of the match on the box, and the sudden flame flickered over his shoulder, two seconds of golden visibility, and then black nothingness again.

  But Harry had seen as much as he wanted to and crashed backwards out from the little shed into the sunny fresh air. Tracy grabbed his shoulder. “What the shit? What did you see? Anything?”

  Harry gulped. “It’s just a shed. There’s a pile of dirty straw and a couple of old rakes and bent spades.”

  “That’s what frightened you?”

  “Bloody hell, no.” Harry found his voice again. “There’s a body. It has to be a dead body, and it’s lying in a lot of dark sticky stuff. I’m guessing blood. It’s a young man. I don’t know him. And it’s not your wretched father. I think it’s someone who got hit over the head. And I’m thinking the obvious about who by.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  The doorway was blocked off, a squad of men dressed in white plastic and speaking softly to each other, moved around the shed, Nicholas Ostopolis pointed, moved back, and discovered something else. The sad and lonely body still lay on the unwelcoming floor, and it was out of sight that Morrison stood, speaking to Tracy Sullivan. Rita, sitting on a fold-up stool, chatted with Sylvia and Harry, both also supplied with stools.

  “Don’t worry,” Rita said. “We’ll get a special truck down here. A couple of them if possible, One for poor Tammy. The other one for you two, and Tracy too if she wants a lift.”

  “He’s one of yours?” asked Harry, almost whispering.

  “Yes. He’s Ralph Tammy,” Rita said, “who I liked very much. Been in the force longer than me I think, at least ten years. He found that horrid little shed and arranged to reconnoitre with some of the others. Now where are they? Who did this? Why just Tammy? And what the hell is going on in this area? Could this really be Lionel Sullivan? It’s a straightforward killing and no nasty mutilations, but then, it’s a man. Perhaps he doesn’t take any interest in men. So why kill him? Or was it someone else? The owner of this silly little room of no use to anyone and abandoned for years by the look of it. I don’t know, but I’m damned furious. Tammy was a good man. A nice man and a good cop.”

  “I’m sorry.” Sylvia felt almost guilty. “But you said there were five of them.”

  “And it really seemed all five disappeared.” Rita tossed her curls, all in hurried knots. “But there seem to be signs. Well, three are on their phones. Morrison is handling all that. If anyone else is dead, I’m going home to cry. Then I’m coming back with an electric saw and a combine harvester.”

  “I don’t know many of your men,” said Harry, slumped back against a tree trunk, his stool uneven and unbalanced on the stony ground. He was unbalanced himself, and still shaking slightly. “But I hope to God no one else was hurt. The thought of all five – it’s not possible. Against one man? Sometimes I feel we bring bad luck with us. It’s a horrible feeling.” He watched Morrison from a distance. “I suppose
we’re keeping you from your own work.”

  “Sullivan has a gun now,” Sylvia murmured.

  “But Tammy wasn’t shot,” said Rita, twisting her fingers so tightly, they looked white. “He was killed from behind with some sharp object, maybe an axe.” She bit her lip, leaning forwards, but still spoke quietly. “What if it’s all him. I don’t understand the backwards and forwards unless now he’s got an accomplice. But this murder, and the last murder of that poor woman last week. And – think about it – the train crash. Who knew you’d be on that train? And perhaps more to the fact, who knew Tracy would be on that train?”

  In blank silence, both Sylvia and Harry gazed back, and then at each other. Finally Harry said, “Honestly, I don’t know.”

  “The Nottingham police,” said Sylvia. “And that Daisy Curzon woman. But she only knew about us. I don’t believe we ever mentioned Tracy at all. I think the train crash was just kids.”

  “No.” Morrison walked up behind them, Tracy following. “That bomb was not sophisticated, but nor was it the work of kids. Not unless some child is practising to become a terrorist. That happens – I’m not joking. But the situation is quite puzzling. Whether it was aimed at you, or at Tracy, or at someone else we haven’t yet identified, we can’t know at this stage. Obviously, the easiest probability is that the bomb was an experiment and had no connection to any of you. But I never believe in coincidences. However, at this precise moment, it’s Sargent Tammy I’m concerned with and the whereabouts of the other four men.” He looked briefly behind him. “The forensic team will be here for quite some days. Maybe a day or two. I have to get back to the station, and you too, Rita. Meanwhile Harry and Sylvia, I suggest you go back home and await further information. Your help may yet be needed.”

  “And Tracy?”

  Morrison nodded. “She’s coming with us. No, no, no threat of arrest. But there’s a lot we need to talk about.”

  Rita stood, stamping her feet back into circulation. “I’ll phone later,” she told Sylvia. “And immediately I hear what happened to our other men.”

  “It must have been beastly,” said Amy, her voice quivering.

  Ruby was cuddling the puppy, who was tempting to eat her fingers. “It must have been ghastly. “You have such amazing adventures, Sylvikins, but they’re all so unpleasant. Aren’t you a bit tired of seeing dead people?”

  “It sounds like that film,” sighed Harry.

  “And first of all the horrible climb down into the pits,” Amy said, imagining the nightmare of falling into the Grand Canyon.

  “Not really pits,” said Harry, somewhat pointlessly. “Just a bit of a slope down.”

  “It sounds like a real platypus,” Amy shivered.

  Percival looked over the top of his newspaper. “She means a precipice.”

  Amy nodded at her husband as he returned to the headlines. “I get giddy-go too,” she told him. “Is that the right word, dear?”

  “Vertigo,” Percival suggested without reappearing.

  “That’s what I said,” Amy smiled. “Giddy-go and a broken foot as well. Poor Sylvia. You could have hit all the murderers over the head with your crotch.”

  “Crutch,” Percival muttered.

  “None of that was the problem,” Sylvia sighed. “It was finding that poor detective on the shed floor. I’m glad I never got that far until afterwards.”

  It had been an hour earlier when Morrison had telephoned. Rita had phoned a little later, and finally Tracy had phoned from back at the pub.

  “DC Crabb fell, and was injured,” Morrison said, briefly running through the details. “His telephone was smashed, and the others were out of the reception area. They stayed to patch up Crabb, but like an idiot, Tammy wanted to check on the cottage he’d seen already. He had no authority to carry on alone, but that’s what he did. Then the others couldn’t find him. Eventually they got Crabb up and found reception again back on the lower road. They still hadn’t found Tammy, but they reported in. They’re back at the station now, except for Crabb.”

  “He’s in hospital,” Rita said later. “A broken leg. Same as you, Sylvia. Seems to be all the fashion. But Tammy, well, he disobeyed orders, but I feel sick about it. He was a good man. I shall find that bastard, I promise you.”

  Two hours later, Tracy told them, “The cops want to meet my Mum too. They reckon they can trace her. Well – good luck to them. There’s that poor sod’s funeral first.”

  “We never knew him,” Harry said from over Sylvia’s shoulder. “No need to attend. But we still haven’t found the right cottage, have we? That wasn’t it, I’m positive.”

  “No it couldn’t have been.” Tracy agreed. “Two small, too empty, and too few corpses.”

  Unamused, Sylvia arranged to meet Tracy again the next day. “We have one evening and a couple of hours tomorrow morning to discover this woman’s address. How about contacting that Stoker person? He must have talked to her.”

  “If he found her, so can we. And so can the police.”

  “But if he already knows, it would be simpler just to ask him,” Sylvia pointed out.

  “Except that we’d have to find him first,” said Harry. “But I’ll phone the publisher. They won’t tell me of course, at least, they certainly shouldn’t. It would be a terrible break of trust. But I can phone easily enough.”

  “And there’s still the problem of Joyce’s grave,” Sylvia added, although more to herself. “It’s all so horrid. At least Joyce can’t suffer anymore, but him having her corpse – so sick. Of course we already know Sullivan, and we know how sick he is. If he’d been put in the same mental institution as that other man, the Howard triplet, then I doubt Sullivan could have escaped.”

  “He was judged sane enough to stand trial,” Harry said. “And surely he was. He certainly knew the difference between right and wrong. The Howard kid never did.”

  “Lionel was just sick enough to prefer wrong over right.” She had grabbed the telephone directory from the sideboard. “Is that mentally deranged? Surely.” She pointed out the telephone number of the same publishing firm which had accepted the offer to market Paul Stoker’s small book on the true crimes of Lionel Sullivan. “You can phone in the morning,” she told Harry. “Ask if they’ll give you Stoker’s number. They won’t. So then ask them to ask Stoker if he’ll phone us back right away. We’ll be out by lunchtime – off to find Tracy.”

  Harry yawned. “Yes, I know,” he said. “I can nag, as I’m sure you know.”

  He dreamed of falling down a precipice and hitting his head on a printing press with an old man watching, in charge of the press, and cackling with maniacal delight. Harry woke with a headache.

  Falling out of bed and reaching for the first bit of covering he could grab, which happened to be Sylvia’s old threadbare dressing gown which she had put out for the rubbish bin, flung it on and staggered to find where the paracetamol had been hidden.

  “Not hidden, darling,” Sylvia blinked and pulled open the top drawer of her bedside table. “And there’s a glass in the bathroom. Get some water. And that worn out pink flowered silk really doesn’t suit you at all.”

  He gulped down the water he’d poured into the glass in the bathroom, accepted the two little white tablets his wife handed him and shrugged off the dressing gown. “So where’s the one I bought you?”

  “Hanging up on the hook on the back of the bathroom door – like always,” Sylvia said. “Right next to your own.” She fetched it for him, took the empty glass and refilled it, then drank it herself. Harry shrugged on his own dressing-gown and collapsed onto the small armchair beside the bedroom door.

  “I have a vile headache. I’m going back to bed for half an hour. Go and have a nice breakfast without me. Then come back and wake me if I’m not up already. Sorry – but I feel ghastly. Bad dreams.”

  Half an hour later Sylvia telephoned ‘Stanhope, Grisham and Sons, Publishing and Marketing Literary Fiction.’ Since Paul Stoker’s book, written in a rush and full o
f mistakes, could never have been described as literary fiction, Sylvia was not expecting to speak to anyone impressively intellectual.

  “Mr Stanhope, or Mr Grisham?”

  “Umm. What about?”

  “My name is Sylvia Joyce, and I have an urgent need to speak to one of your authors,” she told the mumble on the other end. “Paul Stoker would be extremely pleased to hear from me. He’s already mentioned my name in one of his books. I’m sure you know his details, so I’m contacting you for his telephone number.”

  “Ummm.” The man was evidently thinking. “Can’t do that,” he said eventually. “Wouldn’t like it.”

  “Mr Stanhope, by any chance?” Sylvia paused but received no reply. “Well, this is urgent, and I can promise you that Mr Stoker will be delighted to hear from me.”

  “I can ask him first,” suggested the unnamed voice.

  “I can give you my own number,” Sylvia suggested. “Please ask Paul Stoker to phone me back immediately. I’ve no time to waste and will be travelling on business within a couple of hours. If Mr Stoker can’t phone me back at once, I’d be grateful if you could phone me yourself to let me know.”

  “Um, maybe,” said the publisher with vague disinterest. “So what’s so ruddy urgent? Found that creep Sullivan?”

  Sylvia paused and then smiled. “You’re Paul Stoker yourself, aren’t you?” she said. “That fancy publisher’s name is all pretence. I don’t care. Congratulations on publishing that book on Sullivan yourself. You must have made a fortune.”

  Silence. Then, “I could be Alfred Grisham.”

  “But you’re not.”

  There was a faint snigger. “So, the famous Sylvia Greene, what’s so urgent now?”

  “Sylvia Joyce,” she told him. “I married Harry, the one who found Sullivan’s shed the first time. We saw your interview a couple of months or so back. I presume you found Sullivan’s first wife?”

  “Only wife,” he corrected her.