by Joy Ellis
There was a low murmur of assent. ‘Joseph, Dave and myself are at your disposal, Cat. Over to you.’
* * *
It took two hours to sort out the list of Quintin Eaudyke’s inhabitants. Most of the younger generation had grown up and left, but the old people had stayed put in a marshy time warp. Quintin Eaudyke was a ghost village.
‘So, it’s time we got out there and started talking to them.’ Cat looked at the worksheet she had collated. ‘Dave, see if you can get hold of Gladys Hammond’s sister, the one she went to stay with after her daughter Avril disappeared. Yvonne’s excellent pocketbooks tell us that Gladys left Quintin just before her husband’s supposed suicide, and went to this address in Cambridge.’ She passed Dave a paper with the details.
‘Yvonne, how about paying a visit to your old mate, Sergeant Ron Barnes? You know where he lives now, don’t you?’
‘Yes, I’ll go as soon as I’ve cleared a few things here.’
‘Ma’am? Would you and Joseph mind trekking out to the boggy wastes of Quintin Eaudyke? Remarkably, the village still has the same GP, a Dr John Draper. Let’s see how good his memory is, shall we?’ She looked at her list. ‘And there’s the old school caretaker, a man named Sid Wilson. He said he would be prepared to talk to us . . .’ Cat stopped speaking.
Someone rapped at the door.
‘Oh, Lovely! Tres chic!’ Professor Wilkinson stuck his head around the door and beamed at them. ‘They told me that the A-team had relocated, but I had no idea your new accommodation would be so . . . so very retro!’
Nikki raised her eyebrows. ‘Welcome to our new home, Rory. I was just sending out for the mivvi lollies. Can we interest you?’
‘Ooh, mine’s a woppa, if you don’t mind!’
‘Trust you to lower the tone! Now, what brings you to our ancient pile?’
‘I am here because I promised DC Harris that I would be.’
Rory handed a sealed envelope to Dave and bowed. ‘And before you all trot off out, I suggest you take a look at it.’
Everyone looked at the pathologist.
‘The blood on the jacket, previously identified as belonging to Gordon Hammond, did not come from your skeleton.’
There came a chorus of, ‘Oh shit!’ Then silence fell.
Rory held up a hand. ‘But, as you all know, DNA is the blueprint of life . . .’
Nikki detected the hint of mischief in his voice. ‘Skip the lecture, Wilkinson, or you won’t get your woppa! Now, what haven’t you told us?’
‘DI Galena, you are no fun anymore! You are catching on far too quickly. Well, here it is. The blood belonged to a cat.’
‘Bugger! So we’re no further ahead than we were before.’ Dave puffed out his cheeks.
‘Such a disappointment.’ Rory lowered his gaze like a forlorn schoolboy.
‘Hang on a minute, Professor!’ Dave almost shouted. ‘I was there when you checked Hammond’s jacket, remember?’
‘So you were, Dave dear heart, so you were. Oh well, game over. I found a hair with the root still attached, and several other bits that we could lift the DNA from, and I made a positive match. Your mystery man, so long as the jacket’s ownership is not in dispute, is most certainly Gordon Hammond.’
Nikki felt a rush of relief. ‘Rory! I swear I’ll swing for you one day!’
‘Nonsense, Detective. You love me dearly. Now I must get back to the lab. As you will no doubt have heard, business is brisk at the moment.’
Nikki followed him out into the corridor. ‘Rory? Any chance of a prelim copy of the autopsy report on Louise Lawson when it’s ready? Like, just before you officially deliver it to DI Gill Mercer? I badly need to be one step ahead of everyone at the moment.’
‘Naughty, naughty! You know better than to ask a thing like that!’ Then Rory whispered, ‘I’ll slip it under your door in a plain envelope in the dead of night.’
‘On my desk and ASAP would be fine, thank you.’
‘As I said, you’re no fun at all!’
CHAPTER TEN
The signpost for Quintin Eaudyke swayed drunkenly. After a sudden sharp bend, the narrow lane crossed a sludgy ditch, straightened out and widened into a long, endless drove.
Acres and acres of cabbages and Brussels sprouts stretched before them in various shades of green. In the distance, the sun glinted off the spire of the tiny church of St Thomas. Nikki parked in a narrow layby outside the church lychgate, and they got out to survey the hamlet.
All the houses and a few shops clustered around the church, as if huddling together for safety.
‘Where does the doctor live?’ Joseph pulled his jacket tighter around him. The strong wind almost carried his words away.
‘The Limes, on the High Street, next to the butcher, so I’m told.’
They walked, bent into the gale, along the main street, searching for the butcher’s shop or a house called The Limes.
Nikki looked up and down the deserted road. ‘Not exactly a hive of activity, is it?’
‘Ah, this must be the butcher’s — well, it was.’
The windows were boarded up. Little remained of the paintwork — the weather had stripped it clean in places. A faded sign above the door read, Cyril Roberts — Master Butcher.
The doctor’s surgery was set back from the road. It was a fine old Victorian house, in much better repair than its neighbour. The front door swung open at Nikki’s touch, and they stepped into a big, welcoming hallway. There were chairs around the walls, and wherever there was space, a pot plant, a vase of flowers or a table covered in bright magazines or children’s books.
‘I’m sorry, but there is only a morning surgery on a Monday. Is it an emergency?’
The woman had a kindly face. Nikki thought she would have been quite pretty in her younger days.
‘I’m Detective Inspector Nikki Galena, and this is Detective Sergeant Joseph Easter. We would like to speak with Dr Draper, if he’s free.’
‘May I ask what it’s about? I am his wife, Linda.’ A shadow of concern passed across her smiling eyes.
‘We’d like to talk to him, and you too, Mrs Draper, about the events of the late seventies and the eighties, particularly Gordon Hammond and his family.’
‘Oh no! Not again! I do believe we will go to our graves with the name Hammond ringing in our ears.’ She shook her head, and turned down a short corridor. ‘Come this way, Detective Inspector. He’s in his study, although I don’t know how pleased he will be to see you. I suppose I’d better make some tea. We may need it. John! It’s the police to see you. It’s about the Beast of Quintin again.’ Mrs Draper gave a rueful smile, and held the door open.
Dr John Draper was seated in front of a small, pot-bellied wood burning stove. He looked up from his medical journal in astonishment. ‘Good God! He’s been dead for donkey’s years! What can I possible say that has not been said already?’
He stood up and shook hands with them. He was a tall man, with a full head of dark wavy hair and a face as craggy as a moorland tor. ‘Have a seat, and tell me . . . why now, when the man has been food for the fish for nigh on three decades?’
‘Because he hasn’t, Dr Draper. Last week, Gordon Hammond’s body was found in a graveyard in Greenborough. The autopsy showed that he had been murdered.’
The doctor’s eyes were wide. ‘Are you sure about that? He was a seriously disturbed man, Inspector.’
‘Stabbing yourself twice in the back, then caving your own skull in is a difficult manoeuvre to pull off, Dr Draper.’
‘Good Lord! Well, that’s a turn up for the books!’ The doctor ran a hand through his hair and whistled softly. ‘Now I understand why you’re here. Shall we wait for Linda? Her input could be useful. She may recall things that I don’t.’
Soon they were all drinking tea, and Linda began. ‘My husband fought like a demon to get the parents to allow him to talk to those poor children, but they were adamant. It was awful seeing those youngsters suffer and not being allowed to help the
m.’
‘Why were the villagers so reluctant to get help for their children?’ Joseph asked.
The doctor sighed. ‘You have to understand that we are talking about a backward, rural community in the 1970s. They were a close-knit group.’
‘Close, as in incestuous, in some cases,’ added his wife.
‘It’s true. As Linda says, a lot of the families were, and still are, intermarried, cousins marrying cousins and so on. They believed in keeping Quintin’s problems to themselves. Anyone from outside the village was regarded as a foreigner and not to be trusted. Even folk like old Ron Barnes, our local bobby. He came from West Salterby. It’s five miles away, but he was still an outsider!’
‘We are from just outside Boston, and we might as well have been from Alice Springs as far as the villagers were concerned. We still haven’t been completely accepted after forty-three years!’ Linda raised her eyebrows and shook her head. ‘They are an odd bunch, to say the least.’
Nikki was beginning to like the couple. ‘Tell us about the children. What happened to them?’
The doctor sipped his tea noisily. ‘There were lots of different kinds of injury and, well, torture really. But all the children had one thing in common. They had been terrified into silence. They were too frightened to speak out against whoever had hurt them.’
‘Were they sexually abused?’
‘I believe so, although I could not prove it. I was only ever allowed to examine one child thoroughly.’
‘How many children were involved during this period?’
The doctor and his wife looked at each other. Linda looked remorseful, as if they had let the children down. ‘We think about eight or nine. Some John never saw professionally at all. We just heard gossip and noticed the awful changes in the young ones.’
Nikki took a notebook from her bag and looked over to the doctor. ‘As I said, this is now a murder enquiry. I wonder if you could provide me with a list of the children and their parents’ names. Addresses too, if you can remember them.’
The doctor nodded. Linda Draper stood up and, moving heavily, went to a small oak bureau. She took out a creamy white sealed envelope. ‘No need, Detective Inspector. When Sergeant Barnes first came to us with his suspicions, we started keeping a record. We hoped that one day it would help send an evil man to face justice. We thought of destroying it, but never did. It is unofficial, of course. Parts are just observations, some is pure conjecture.’ She handed Nikki the envelope.
‘They are all there, Inspector,’ added the doctor. ‘Names, addresses, dates. It ends when Avril Hammond was killed and her father’s coat was found out on the marsh.’
‘The Avril Hammond case was left open, Doctor. She was never found.’
‘Who would know where to look, out here in the fens?’
‘True.’ Nikki looked at the neatly written pages. ‘This is far more than we could have expected. We do appreciate it. It will make our lives considerably easier.’ She passed the sheets of information to Joseph, who studied them eagerly.
‘This is brilliant, Doctor! We already have a list of the population of the entire village and its environs, but this will cut down our interviewing time no end.’ Joseph looked through the names and uttered a grunt of surprise. ‘Ma’am! Look, Frederick Cartwright! No wonder Yvonne said she recognised the name! They were living here when the troubles started.’ Joseph read aloud:
‘Frederick and Ellen Cartwright, The Cottage, End Drove. March, 1968. Daughter Millicent, brought to surgery having fallen into a bramble patch. On examination, the lacerations, scratches and bruises, were not consistent with the purported “accident.” One of the cuts was most certainly caused by a sharp bladed instrument and a set of three bruises were believed to be from fingers grasping the girl’s arm. Millie remained silent throughout the dressing of the wounds and we did not see her out playing or with the other children from that day for at least two months.’
The doctor and his wife were looking from Joseph to Nikki.
‘What else can you tell us about the Cartwright family, Doctor?’
‘Let me see. Ellen died back in the seventies, seventy-three or seventy-four, I think. She picked up a really bad chest infection and by the time they called me, it had turned into pneumonia. Millicent went abroad, Australia — no, New Zealand. Fred sold up and went to stay with his sister I think. Can’t tell you any more, I’m afraid. How about you, Lin?’
‘Not really. Old Maggie, Lily Harvey’s sister, used to keep in touch with him after he moved away, but she’s quite gaga now. I don’t think she’d be much help to you. Why are you interested?’
‘A Mr Frederick Cartwright passed away last week, a . . . er, sudden death. We couldn’t find much at all about his past. It seems that your excellent record-keeping may have answered another of our problems.’
‘He was living around here?’ The doctor looked puzzled.
‘Greenborough.’
‘How odd! We never knew. The way news travels in these parts, you would think someone might have mentioned that he’d come back.’
‘He turned into something of a recluse, we believe.’
‘Ah, well. He had suffered such a lot, perhaps I can understand that.’
‘Doctor, can we ask you about Gordon Hammond? We know something about him, obviously. One of our officers was on the original case, and we know he was suspected of abducting and killing his daughter, Avril. Do you have any thoughts on this theory?’
‘More tea, please, my darling. This could turn into a long session,’ the doctor said to his wife.
Linda Draper collected the cups and left the room. She paused in the doorway. ‘The less I hear about that man, the better.’
The doctor turned to them. ‘We are in two camps over this matter, Detective Inspector. My wife is adamant that Hammond was the pervert who terrorised the children, then finally turned to murder.’
‘And you don’t think so?’ Joseph was interested to know why. Dr Draper was the only person so far not to have condemned him outright.
‘I can’t really say. He was a strange man, moody, bad-tempered and rude. His son died tragically, and I had to prescribe him tablets for a while. The locals picked on him because he didn’t like drinking with them in the Running Horse. He kept himself to himself, and because of his temper, they reckoned he beat his wife. To my knowledge, Gladys was never beaten. She didn’t have very good hand-eye coordination, as they put it nowadays.’ He chuckled. ‘Let’s say you would never have given Gladys your new car to park! She fell over things, walked into things, dropped things. She was born clumsy, and because she was always bruised or injured in some way, the rumour spread that Gordon knocked her about.’
‘What about the girl, Avril? How was he with her?’
‘He adored her, evidently. She was a bright kid, and as far as I know, she lacked for little. Gladys came from a good family, but they disowned her when she married Gordon. Stupid really. He was a damned hard worker and provided for them as best he could.’
‘He broke his wrist, didn’t he?’
‘Fell from a barn roof. Didn’t come to me until a while after. I ran him to the hospital but it was too late. They wanted to operate, to re-break it, but he didn’t want to be away from home. They did what they could but it always bothered him in damp weather.’
‘Do you think he was capable of murder?’
‘His best friend swore that he couldn’t have done it, and I was tempted to agree with him. But who knows?’
‘Who was his best friend?’
‘Our old neighbour, the butcher, Cyril Roberts.’
Nikki recalled the deserted butcher’s shop. ‘Is he still here in Quintin?’
‘Sort of. He moved to an old cottage near the river, on the outskirts of the village. We hardly ever see him anymore. His girl lives in Greenborough, and his wife and he split up not long after Avril disappeared.’
‘Where did she go?’
‘Nowhere, she’s still here. She’s got a
terraced cottage in Midville Lane, down by the pond. Not a happy woman, that one.’
Joseph was still writing notes. ‘Sounds like they were in two camps as well.’
‘I’ll say. They were at war. Cyril’s wife always swore that Gordon had harmed their child in some way, but Cyril would have none of it.’ The doctor opened the cast-iron doors of the stove and pushed in two logs. He looked into the fire. ‘This is purely conjecture, so don’t hold me to it, but I think Cyril Roberts suspected someone else. It was only after Gordon’s disappearance that he began to concede that his friend may have done those terrible things after all.’
‘And now we know that Gordon was murdered. Any ideas about who could have done it?’
‘Anyone and everyone on our list. Or even all of them. I’d say it was a very private trial and execution carried out by Quintin Eaudyke’s native-born citizens.’
The door opened and Linda Draper appeared with a second tray of tea.
‘I’m really sorry, Mrs Draper, but we have to get off now.’ With a regretful look at the knitted tea cosy and china cups, Nikki stood up. ‘Your help has been invaluable and I’m sure we will be back with more questions, if you don’t mind. Thanks again.’
Linda Draper showed them out. When they reached the door, she touched Nikki’s arm. ‘It was Hammond that hurt those children. I know it.’
Nikki stopped and looked at her. She sounded so certain. ‘Do you know something that your husband doesn’t?’
Linda Draper looked troubled. ‘I was somewhere I shouldn’t have been, and I overheard one of the children actually saying it. They named Hammond.’
Nikki drew a breath. ‘Which one, Linda? Which child?’
The voice was little more than a whisper. ‘Avril Hammond. On the day before she disappeared.’ She clutched at Nikki’s arm. ‘I can’t talk here. I’ll ring you later, at six o’clock.’
The door closed behind them.
* * *
Rory Wilkinson pulled off his mask, tore off the sterile examination gloves and threw them in the waste bin. ‘My mother always said I would have made a wonderful florist! But did I listen to her?’ He stared at the cold, eviscerated body that lay on the autopsy table. The woman, little more than a child really, had been beautiful once. Now she was split open from jaw to pubis. ‘What I’d give to be tying a pink ribbon on a bunch of pretty freesias! But what am I doing instead? I’m slicing up the bits that our killer missed, and there weren’t many of those either.’