“Cat is with the body,” Sir Phineas explained. “As soon as she reported it to me, I sent her back to guard it.”
“Guard it?” Stark said. “From what? Being eaten by foxes?”
“There are predatory forces in Pooks Wood that are neither man nor animal,” Sir Phineas said. “Without someone to watch over the poor fellow, whomever he is, his soul could be taken away by a ghost or demon, perhaps even a hobgoblin.”
Stark started to reply, but held silent at a subtle gesture from Ravyn. That was fine by Stark—let the guv’nor contend with these country bumpkin nutters.
“Does Miss Wheeler carry a mobile?” Ravyn asked.
“Yes, of course she does,” Sir Phineas replied.
“The number please.”
The Squire frowned, but did as he was asked.
Ravyn punched in the number. “Miss Wheeler, this is Detective Chief Inspector Ravyn.” He paused. “Yes, we are here now with Sir Phineas and Miss Holloway. Tell me, do you have a sat-nav app on your mobile? Ah, very good. Would you please send…” He paused again as his mobile beeped. “Yes, I have it. We will be with you very shortly.”
Ravyn activated the corresponding application on his mobile and pressed a few buttons. Almost immediately, the other mobiles chimed, indicating information received. Penworthy and her driver returned to their vehicle, as did Powell-Mavins. Ravyn turned to Sir Phineas and Prudence.
“What is happening?” Sir Phineas demanded. “Where are those two going?”
“There’s no need to guide us, Sir Phineas.” Ravyn explained. “I received the coordinates from your gamekeeper and passed those to the Scene of Crime Officer and Dr Penworthy.”
“This is my land,” Sir Phineas asserted. “You have no right to traipse about it willy-nilly. This is monstrous! The Chief Constable shall hear about this outrage. There are forces in those woods which are inimical to humanity.”
“I don’t mean to upset you, but the fewer at a crime scene, the better,” Ravyn said. “You can assist us by staying here with Miss Holloway.” He considered the squire’s flushed face. “I think it better for you as well.” He nodded to Prudence. “Counsellor.”
“The Chief Inspector is right,” she said, taking him lightly by the arm. “The murder last night, the stress of being questioned. You do not need more anxiety. Come along, Phinney, and you can lie down for awhile.”
“Nutters, all of them, sir,” Stark said softly. “Inimical forces in the woods? He should see the midnight streets of Stepney.”
“Take us out as we came in,” Ravyn instructed, looking at the data on his mobile. “The location is not quite as much on Sir Phineas’ patch as he indicated.”
“Probably sees the entire woods as his domain.”
Ravyn nodded. “Take us into the village, then the first left you come upon. It will still be a good tramp, but not as far.”
When Stark turned into the lane indicated, he saw the bridge spanning the river, the spire of the church beyond. The others had arrived, their vans parked by the lane’s wooded side. Opposite, the lane was lined with storeyed cottages, all with neat gardens. More importantly to Ravyn, they all possessed windows, both upper and lower, overlooking the lane.
Stark glanced at the plaque set into the wall at the corner. “Wrait Lane? Funny word, that. Any meaning to it?”
“It’s a word local to Hammershire,” Ravyn explained, still looking up and down the line of cottages. “It entered the vernacular when the ‘h’ at the end was dropped.”
Stark added the missing letter. “Wraith? Oh, a ghost. Figures.”
“Coming, Stark?”
“Right with you, sir,” Stark said, catching up. He looked back at the ghost-named road before it was lost to sight. “Yeah, it bloody well figures, doesn’t it?”
After several minutes, Ravyn slipped his mobile into his pocket. They followed the sounds made by the others establishing the crime scene’s perimeter. Now began the meticulous tasks of searching for clues and processing the body. A woman sat on a stump a short distance away, a shotgun across her lap.
“Miss Wheeler?” Ravyn said as they approached.
She nodded. “Call me Cat.”
Cat Wheeler was an athletic woman, tall and raw-boned, the product of a life spent mostly outdoors. Her coarse bleached hair was pulled back in a short pony. She wore no make-up, sparing her face the stress and trauma which women inflicted upon themselves in a quixotic quest for beauty. Had Stark not known her age from his background check, he would have guessed her much younger than she was. She watched the two men approaching as she might observe vermin nearing a snare.
“I’m DCI Ravyn, and this is DS Stark.”
She nodded.
Ravyn glanced toward Dr Penworthy, then at Cat. “How did you come across the body?”
“Following the trail of a vixen to see where her litter was,” she explained. “Wanted to make sure it wasn’t too near any of the trails. Fools sometimes go walking here about, playing silly buggers and such. Thought I might have to cut off access. Don’t want no one disturbing the animals…or anything else, for that matter.”
Stark looked up from his notebook. “You do realise this is not part of Sir Phineas’ estate?”
Cat gave him a long appraising look, her pale lips curving into a faintly mocking smile. She looked to Ravyn and jerked her chin in Stark’s direction.
“Not from around here, is he?” she said. “Just another strapper come to play in the countryside.”
Stark stiffened. The traditional English distrust of foreigners had, in Hammershire County, distilled to create a heady brew. Here, foreigners did not only come from across the sea, but from outside the county, sometimes even from another village. It was hardly the first time someone had marked him an outsider for his speech and mannerisms, but it seemed to sting more, coming from her.
“The body, Miss Wheeler?” Ravyn asked. He paused. “Cat?”
“I saw a pile of leaves that had no business being where it was, not fallen or blowed,” she answered. “Sometimes people dump their cast-offs. Squire don’t like that none. Has me throw it back in their own yards if I can ken whose it is.”
Stark jotted down her words diligently, even as he fought the urge to remind her that what she did was as illegal as the dumping in the first place. He did not want to stem the flow of her narrative, nor feel again the snarky lash of her tongue.
“I pushed aside leaves with the stock, saw a hand and knew it weren’t the usual kind of cast-off, didn’t I?” she continued. “Pushed off a bit more, saw his face. Kinda calm that, like he was sleeping, so I thought maybe he was just pissed, but when I saw his chest…”
As gamekeeper, Cat Wheeler was well acquainted with death. She had seen the quiet kind, an animal having lived out its allotted years, but more often the violence of death, whether from tooth and nail or the cruelties of poachers. Even so, she shuddered at the memory of the dead man’s gaping chest, devoid of heart.
“Well, that was when I lit back to the manor house to tell Sir Phineas what I found,” she said after a moment. “I told him where it was—he knows the woods keen as I do—and he called you. I did not expect him to send me back, but he did, and here I am.”
“Why didn’t you call Sir Phineas?” Ravyn asked.
“Or the police directly?” Stark added.
She glared at Stark. “He’s Squire and you’re not.” She looked to Ravyn. “Squire don’t like mobiles here ‘less it’s an emergency.”
Stark asked: “You didn’t think this was an emergency?”
“Not for him,” she said. “He’s brown bread, ain’t he? He’s got no more cares in this world, do he? Oh, he may hang around, become one of the lights you see flitting through the woods at night, but the mortal plane won’t be much but a shadow for him now.” She uttered a sigh. “Just another poor damned wandering soul.”
Stark bent his head low to his notebook as he wrote.
“Don’t think I can’t see that smirk, S
ergeant Strapper,” Cat said. “Come out in the woods with me at night and we’ll see that smirk drop real quick, see you chased by the shining ones, grabbed at by pookas in the brush.” She laughed. “City men!”
“Did you recognise the victim, Cat?” Ravyn asked.
She shook her head. “Didn’t ken him.”
“Never around the hall?” Ravyn asked. “Never in the village?”
“I don’t see all of Squire’s callers, but I see most of them, and he wasn’t one,” Cat answered. “As to the village, I don’t get there much—too big for my liking, too many people.”
Stark was this time more successful in keeping his feelings hid.
“Go to church on Sundays?” Ravyn asked.
“That’s a daft question for a policeman to ask.” When Ravyn did not reply, she shrugged and said: “Not much of a churchgoer, me. Easter and Christmas, more for Squire’s sake than my own, but not even that now.”
“Oh?”
“The new vicar,” she said, as if that explained all. After a long moment of silence, she added: “From what Squire and his lady friend say, he’s quite the wanker, isn’t he? I don’t know him, and don’t want to know him, but I knew Reverend Ormsby. Fine man, him, even if he did wear the dog-collar. One of us, he was, and didn’t go ‘round telling people they were fools for believing what we can see with our own eyes, what our Mams and Grans told us to be true at the hearthside.”
“So, you’ve seen ghosts yourself?” Ravyn asked.
Cat looked at him askance. “That’s a question I’d expect from your fine City man, not from a man born and bred in Hammershire, even if you don’t hail from Little Wyvern. You might as well ask if owls take souls or elves dance in the fullness of the moon.”
“What do you think of FOG?” Ravyn asked.
“Ain’t my place to think anything, is it?” she replied. “If Squire wants to help Aggie and Freddie play silly buggers with ghosts, isn’t my place to say no.” She paused. “But I’d rather he didn’t.”
“Only a fool taunts a ghost, that it?”
“Aye, Mr Ravyn.” She smiled. “If you truly believe that, at least half of you got some sense.”
“You heard about what happened to Simon Jones?”
She nodded. Despite her earlier claim about churchgoing, she immediately crossed herself. It was automatic and unselfconscious.
“Some people say he was killed by a ghost,” Ravyn said.
“Squire say he was, and Aggie and Freddie too, I gather,” she said. “Miss Holloway maybe too, but she’s cagey, that one, so…” She shrugged. “Who knows?”
“And you?”
“As you said, Mr Ravyn, only a fool taunts a ghost,” Cat said. “If Simon Jones was anything, he was a fool.”
“Did you know him well?” Ravyn asked.
“Not to speak of.”
“Then how…” Stark began.
“Because he hunted ghosts, taunted them, made their business his own,” she replied. “I didn’t call him a fool because I judged him such, but because he branded himself such by his own actions.”
“And the plans FOG have for Little Wyvern?”
Cat shook her head. “Can’t come to any good. Truth to tell, I would like Squire to get out of it, but he’s too fond of Aggie and Freddie, too ready to believe they know what they’re doing.” She snorted a guffaw. “As if those two prats ever did!”
“How well do you know them?” Stark asked.
“They’re from Little Wyvern, aren’t they?” She looked at Stark defiantly. “Well, so am I.”
“How long have you known them?” Stark asked.
Cat looked to Ravyn. “He’s never going to get any smarter, is he?” She looked back to Stark. “This ain’t London, City man. We’ve knowed each other all our lives, haven’t we? That’s how I know those two are daft, always have been, always will be, and how I know Squire would be better off well away from them.”
Stark wrote down her words, concentrating on accuracy, for he knew Ravyn would compare his report to his own memory. Also, focussing on her words kept him from thinking of her tone.
“Is there anything else, Mr Ravyn?” she asked. “I have work to do, and I’d like to be away from here.”
“No, that will be all, at least for now,” Ravyn said. “Thank you for your cooperation.”
She stood, nodded curtly to the two men, then walked away. She had taken no more than a dozen paces towards the manor house when she turned and fixed Stark with a crystal blue gaze.
“Sergeant, if you really want to know what goes on when night falls, this would be a good time to look for ghosts and pookas in the woods,” she said. “Come tonight and you’ll see what you don’t believe. They’re bound to be agitated by the blood spilt, but don’t you worry none—I’ll hold your hand and keep you safe.”
Stark reddened.
Ravyn turned and, smiling, headed for Dr Penworthy.
“Ah, no…no thanks, but thanks,” Stark said, words stumbling over his tongue. “Not tonight…I mean, I don’t think so. Be at home. I’ve got to be at home…my wife…you know…”
She turned away, then looked back over her shoulder. “Maybe some other night, Sergeant. Look me up. I am not hard to find.”
Stark watched her vanish into the forest, then joined Ravyn. A forensics boffin handed him plastic coveralls and gloves.
“Interesting girl, don’t you think, Stark?” Ravyn said.
“No, sir. Mental, like everyone else in Little Wyvern.” He glanced briefly at the dark forest. “I didn’t like her attitude.”
“She fancied you, I think.”
“I’m married.”
“I don’t think she cares.”
Stark shuddered as images flashed through his mind. “Well, I care!” His reply came out more forceful than intended.
“It was an observation, Stark,” Ravyn said. “Not a suggestion or endorsement.”
“Yes, sir.” He snapped the last glove on. “Sorry, sir.”
“Been dead a week or so,” Dr Penworthy said as they neared.
“And the cause of death, Doctor?” Ravyn asked.
“Pretty sure, spinal shock, again, but I’ll know better after the post mortem. Speaking of which.” She reached into her bag and took out a report with plastic covers. “I expected one or the other of you to attend Simon Jones’ post mortem.”
Ravyn studied the report for less than a half-minute, handed it to Stark, then kneeled with Penworthy beside the body.
“It’s infuriating when I see you read through a complex report like that.” After a moment, she turned away from his innocent gaze and gestured toward the chest cavity. “Same precision cutting and removal of the heart, all after death.”
Stark made no effort to get a better view. “Same hand?”
“Could be, but…” Penworthy shrugged. “I might know better after I get him on the table, but it’s hard to imagine two such killers in Little Wyvern.” She paused. “Hard to imagine a killer at all.”
“But it’s a human hand at least?” Stark asked, then added, quickly: “Never mind, Doctor. Forget I asked that. These nutters are starting to get to me.”
Penworthy looked at Stark, then Ravyn.
“The prevailing theory hereabout is that Simon Jones was done in by a ghost,” Ravyn explained. “This chap, being in these haunted woods…the villagers will see it as confirmation.”
“Bollocks!” Penworthy snapped.
“Why, Doctor?” Ravyn asked. “Because ghosts do not exist, or because ghosts do not kill?”
“Your reading technique is probably your least infuriating trait, Chief Inspector.” A faint smile curved her lips.
“So I am told by most people,” Ravyn admitted. “If nothing else, you are at supported by a plurality of opinion.”
Stark studied them. Again, he thought of the rumour heard, that Dr Penworthy and the chief inspector had been an ‘item’ for a brief period. Though he had never seen anything to give the story legs, he somet
imes wondered. They were friends, of a sort, with much in common intellectually. They did bicker, but even in that there seemed to be a kind of fondness and respect, an odd sort of appreciation. It was almost as if one were a whetstone, the other a knife’s edge, but Stark could never tell which was which.
“Any identification?” Ravyn asked.
“Not a smidgen,” Penworthy replied. “Pockets cleaned out. I’ll run his fingerprints when I get back.”
Ravyn looked to Stark. “Have Mr Pettibone and Miss Swanner picked up so they can have a look at the body.”
Stark nodded. “Could be him. Description matches Timing’s right. It would explain the missed appointment with them at the Blithe Spirit, and why he hasn’t been back to his flat for awhile.”
“No sign of the heart, Doctor?” Ravyn asked.
“Not under any of the leaves, nor nearby” she replied. “You might check with Angus. I asked him to search about.”
Ravyn swept his gaze over the body, then the area up to the line of crime scene tape. Anyone else, Stark thought, would rely on photographs, sketches and digital recordings. Ravyn stood and started for the head of the forensics team, Stark in tow.
“Oi!” Penworthy called after them. “You two!”
They turned.
“Post mortem, 1500 hours; there better not be just me and my client this time,” she said. “You know the rules.”
“Stark will attend,” Ravyn said.
Stark uttered a barely stifled half-groan.
“I’ll be in Heln’s office at the time,” Ravyn added.
Stark licked suddenly dry lips.
“Good luck with that.” Penworthy said. “Personally, I’ll take a dead stiff over a live one any day of the week.”
Ravyn and Stark slipped off their protective overalls and gloves, handing them to the same junior boffin who had issued them. They approached Powell-Mavins.
“I know what you’re going to ask, Arthur,” the Scotsman said, pointing the stem of an unlit pipe at them. “I’ve had what lads and lasses I can spare beating the brush, but there’s no sign at all of that poor bugger’s bleeding heart.”
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