Mud, Muck and Dead Things: (Campbell & Carter 1)

by Granger, Ann

  Smith: Yes.

  Insp. H.: Can you tell us what happened there yesterday afternoon, Thursday?

  Smith: I shot Dad and Mum.

  Insp. H.: Was it an accident?

  Smith: No, I meant to do it.

  Pause for consultation between accused’s solicitor and accused.

  Mr Samson: Mr Smith is not confessing to premeditated murder.

  Insp. H.: It was on the spur of the moment?

  Mr Samson (to his client): You don’t have to answer that at this time.

  Insp. H.: Why did you do it? Did you have a reason to kill your parents?

  Smith: It was time.

  Insp. H.: What do you mean, it was time?

  Smith: Things had been building up to it and the time had come.

  Insp. H.: Whom did you shoot first?

  Smith: My father. I heard him coming. I was in the kitchen. I took down the shotgun and loaded it. He came in and I loosed it off at him.

  Insp. H.: Did your father have time to say anything?

  Smith: He said, ‘What the bloody hell are you doing with that?’

  Insp. H.: What about your mother?

  Smith: She was in the washhouse, next door. She came running when she heard the shot. I swung round and pointed the shotgun at her. She backed away through the doorway, back into the washhouse. I followed her and I shot her, too.

  Insp. H.: Why? Why kill your mother?

  Smith: I had to. She would never have let it rest.

  Insp. H.: What did you do next, Nathan?

  Smith: I went into the kitchen and waited for Eli to come home from market.

  Insp. H.: Did you intend to kill your brother, too?

  Smith: No. What would I want to do that for? Cows would need to be brought in for milking soon. Anyhow, I picked that Thursday because Eli wouldn’t be there until later. I got no quarrel with Eli.

  Mr Samson: Inspector, it must be clear that my client is in a confused state of mind. I have attempted to explain to him about premediated murder but I am not sure he fully understands.

  Smith: I’m not simple. I know what it is. If you say that’s what I did, then it’s what I did.

  Insp. H.: What happened when Eli came home?

  Smith: He came into the kitchen. He asked what I’d done. I told him I’d shot Mum and Dad. He could see Dad on the floor and he went past me into the washhouse, to check on Mum, I suppose. To see if I’d done it, like I said. Then he came back and went past me again, not saying a word, and went out into the yard. I reckon it had given him a bit of a turn. Couldn’t be helped.

  Insp. H.: What did you do next, Nathan?

  Smith: I went upstairs to wash. To wash off the blood on my hands and face. It was Dad’s blood. It went everywhere. Shotgun blast does that.

  Insp. H.: What was your purpose in washing it off? Why did you want to wash it off?

  Smith: I wanted to look tidy when you lot came, the police. Insp. H.: And you just waited there in the house until the police came?

  Smith: Yes. I thought about going out and bringing in the cows with Eli. But I heard a woman’s voice. She was talking to him out in the yard. I think it was Doreen Warble. She’s a friend of my mother’s and comes regular to buy her eggs. I didn’t go out there because I didn’t want to see her. She’s a terrible old gossip.

  The door of her office opened with a soft swish as it brushed the floor. Jess looked up, startled. She’d been so engrossed in her reading that she wouldn’t have been surprised to see one of the players in the drama on the page before her, standing there.

  But it was Ian Carter. He stood in the doorway, half in and half out of the room, his hand still resting on the door handle.

  ‘Working late, Jess?’

  She couldn’t remember if he’d called her ‘Jess’ before. She was pretty sure it was the first time.

  ‘Yes, sir, well, sort of. I was reading the file on the old Cricket Farm double murder.

  ‘Oh.’ He hovered in the doorway. ‘No point in burning the midnight oil over it. The day’s long enough.’

  ‘I’m just about to pack up,’ Jess told him.

  He still hovered, a picture of awkwardness. She had an inspired guess at what was in his mind. If I was a man, she thought, he’d ask me now to go with him to have a pint somewhere, before going home. But because I’m a woman and because he doesn’t know me that well, he feels he can’t. Or perhaps he thinks I’m running home to someone. No such luck.

  ‘Right,’ he said. ‘Goodnight, then.’

  ‘Goodnight, sir, see you tomorrow.’

  She was alone again. She put away the file on the Cricket Farm murders and unhooked her jacket from where it hung. Time she went home, too. The job can get to you, she thought. Perhaps Carter’s detached manner had been intentionally cultivated to deal with that. He was determined it wouldn’t get to him.

  Her mobile phone was buzzing like a frantic bee caught behind a glass pane. She’d forgotten she’d switched off the call tune. She fished it out hurriedly. ‘Hello?’

  It was Tom Palmer, doing what Carter had failed to do, ask her out for a drink that evening. ‘And if you haven’t eaten, neither have I.’

  It wasn’t the first time she and Tom had spent a quiet, friendly evening together. Tom had a problem and she understood it well. He had the sort of job that put other people off. He couldn’t talk about what he did. That sort of gruesome detail was hardly table conversation and if he met up with someone who really did want to hear about autopsies, that person was to be regarded with caution. It restricted his circle of acquaintance. If he shook hands with someone, that person wondered just what Tom had been cutting up that day. If he shared a steak meal, other diners watched him carve his portion with fascination.

  ‘There was this woman,’ Tom once told her. ‘She sat next to me at a dinner party and asked what I did. So I told her. She asked me, fair enough, why I’d chosen that field. I told her, because I like doing it. It interests me. She didn’t speak another word to me for the rest of the evening. She didn’t even look at me. After dinner, she sat on the other side of the room. I was, like, Dr Frankenstein as far as she was concerned!’

  So, from time to time, Tom liked to go out for a drink for an hour or two with a companion who knew what he did and didn’t give it a second thought. Jess had often found telling someone you were a CID officer had a similar dampening effect on a budding conversation. She sometimes thought, when she and Tom sat over their drinks, that they were like a couple of compatriot exiles in a foreign land.

  But it beat sitting alone in front of the TV with a bowl of pasta or a takeaway chicken fried rice.

  ‘Fine,’ she told him. ‘Where? If you’ve got no objection, I’d like to try a place called the Hart. It’s near Cricket Farm.’

  ‘Is this work?’ asked Tom’s suspicious voice.

  ‘No, just curiosity.’

  The Hart hadn’t travelled the route upmarket taken by the Foot to the Ground, but it was a similar stone building. It had settled down on its medieval foundations and opened its doors now, as it had always done, to the hungry and thirsty. Like the Foot to the Ground it was still a popular place to eat. But its menu was less ambitious, with a heavy reliance on chips. Over the centuries it had catered to travellers and drovers, farmers and their workers, weary passengers on the post coach, any and everyone in need. People no longer arrived on foot or on horseback; like Tom and Jess they arrived in cars.

  Inside it was a little well worn and had a lingering background odour of fried food and spilled beer. One corner was dominated by the flashing screen of a fruit machine, and another was occupied by an old man accompanied by an elderly, red-eyed spaniel, but the atmosphere was relaxed and it seemed to be doing good trade,

  ‘Looks all right,’ said Tom. Given the surroundings in which he worked, he appreciated the day-to-day normality of fruit machines and aged dogs. He studied the menu card he’d picked up from the bar on their way to their table. ‘Fish and chips, steak and chips, double b
acon burger and chips, chicken and chips. Oh, lasagne . . . with chips.’

  ‘Actually,’ whispered Jess, ‘I’m afraid we’ll just have to have a drink and move on somewhere else for food. See that couple?’

  She indicated a spot on the far side of the room where Penny Gower and Andrew Ferris sat by the window.

  ‘Yup. Who are they?’

  ‘The girl runs a riding stable and the guy helps her out. I’ve interviewed them both in the course of present enquiries.’ Jess grimaced as she produced this phrase. ‘The girl saw a suspect vehicle, told her friend, he rang the owner of the farm who went there, found the body and called us in.’

  ‘Sounds like “This is the House That Jack Built”!’ observed Tom.

  ‘Well, anyway, I don’t suppose they’ll be too happy when they see me. They might think I’m, well, trailing them. You understand, don’t you, Tom? You don’t mind moving on?’

  ‘Sure I understand. You want to get away from work. Not sit here eating chips and staring at it!’

  They drank up and rose to leave, edging their way across the now crowded bar room. But Penny had spotted them. She whispered to Andrew who turned round, looking surprised.

  ‘Have to say hello!’ muttered Jess. She went over to their table.

  ‘Well, good evening, Inspector!’ Ferris greeted her. ‘What brings you out here? If it’s not official again, that is?’

  ‘No, a friend and I just dropped in for a drink. We’re not staying.’

  ‘Put off by the menu?’ asked Ferris with a grin.

  ‘It’s a bit heavy on the calories,’ admitted Jess. ‘But we didn’t mean to stay and eat, anyway.’

  ‘We haven’t driven you away, have we?’ asked Penny, more percipient.

  ‘Goodness, no!’ Jess lied blithely.

  ‘Right,’ she said to Tom when they got outside. ‘You choose the next place! I might have guessed that, being so close to the stables, Penny might be there.’

  To herself she thought, if Penny hadn’t told me that there was no romantic connection between her and Ferris, I’d have thought otherwise. Why does it worry her, I wonder?

  They drove five miles down the road and found themselves at an almost identical old pub, this time called the Black Dog.

  ‘All right?’ asked Tom, as they climbed out of his car. ‘Not put off by the name?’

  ‘Should I be?’

  ‘Blacks dogs are associated in some legends with witchcraft or the devil.’

  ‘Spare me; I can do without the paranormal. The so-called “normal” is weird enough.’ She glanced round as they went through the door. ‘All clear. So long as Eli Smith doesn’t wander in for his evening pint!’

  Fortunately, this didn’t happen.

  ‘What made you curious to see the Hart? This place has almost the same menu.’ Tom had scanned the new menu card. ‘Only it does chilli and chips as well.’

  ‘I’ll stick to the vegetarian option, I think, cannelloni with spinach and ricotta. Why did I want to see the Hart?’ Jess had the grace to look mildly embarrassed. ‘It was where Doreen Warble went twenty-seven years ago to report the previous murder at Cricket. It was the nearest telephone. She couldn’t use the phone at Cricket.’

  ‘What previous murder and who on earth is, was, Doreen Warble?’

  Jess summed up the tragedy of the Smiths as briefly as possible. ‘I was reading transcripts of the interviews from that inquiry this evening. It put the name of the Hart in my head.’

  ‘So, a murderous sort of spot, Cricket Farm? Do you really want the veggie option? I’ll fight my way to the bar and order.’

  ‘I don’t know what part, if any, the previous murders have to do with the present case,’ she told him when he came back.

  ‘What does the new boss think?’ Tom asked unexpectedly.

  ‘I don’t really know,’ Jess admitted. ‘He’s not the sort who tells you what’s on his mind.’

  ‘Think you’ll get on all right with him?’

  ‘I certainly hope so but it’s early days. So far, I don’t see why we shouldn’t be able to work together just fine.’ She paused. ‘You get called outside the area, Tom. Have you ever come across a Superintendent Markby?’

  Tom frowned. ‘Yes, once. He’s over at Cheriton, isn’t he? I did come across him when I was standing in for James Fuller.’

  ‘Markby was brilliant to work for,’ said Jess. ‘But the funny thing is, Carter asked me why I moved here. He mentioned Markby but he was very, well, enigmatic about it all.’

  ‘Perhaps they’ve got a history,’ Tom said. ‘Watch your step. Oh, blimey, is that the cannelloni? It’s industrial strength!’

  Penny and Andrew remained at the wobbly circular oak table where Jess had seen them. They’d collected their drinks at the bar and delivered their orders and were awaiting their food: chicken, salad and chips for Penny and steak, chips and side salad for Andrew. To keep themselves going until this fare arrived, they were sharing a plate of nachos, a delicacy Palmer had missed on the menu. Now the place had filled up, the hum of chatter had grown louder. It was even starting to drown out the piped music which provided another difference between the Hart and the Foot to the Ground. The latter’s clientèle didn’t like their conversation disturbed by ‘wallpaper music’. The Hart’s clientèle was, on the whole, younger, and accepted the tinny background tones as normal. Most of them, without the thud of distant pop music, would have felt bereft.

  ‘What do you suppose the fuzz was doing here?’ he asked, raising his pint glass to his lips.

  ‘Inspector Campbell can go out for a drink with a friend, like you and me, I suppose. I don’t know who the man was. He didn’t look too much like a policeman.’

  ‘Still don’t know why she had to come all the way out here.’

  ‘She was out this way earlier,’ Penny told him. ‘She came to see me at the stables again.’

  Andrew took a long swig of his beer. ‘Oh? Likes it round here, does she? Saw the Hart and thought, that’s the place for me. I must go there. What did she want at the stables?’

  ‘To show us a photograph. Eli was with me. He got rather upset and I do hope the inspector understands his point of view.’

  Ferris set down the pint glass on the oak surface, already marked with countless rings formed by damp glasses over the years. ‘What photograph was this, then?’

  ‘A group one, showing the staff of one of the pubs round here, the Foot to the Ground. Do you know it?’

  ‘I know of it,’ he said. ‘Dearest pint for miles around, so I hear. Prices set high to keep out the riff-raff.’

  ‘Well, it seems the dead girl has been identified and she worked there. Her name was Eva Zelená.’

  ‘The police are on the ball!’ Andrew sounded surprised. ‘What did they hope to gain from showing you and Eli the photograph?’

  ‘Just to find out if we recognised anyone in it. I didn’t, of course. Eli recognised the dead girl and then got very touchy when the inspector wanted to know if he was sure. I suppose they have to ask. They want to know if anyone in the photo has ever been seen around Cricket. That takes in the stables, I suppose, as we’re so near. They’ll probably ask Lindsey and Selina, even you! Selina won’t mind. I think she was chatting pretty freely to that woman inspector the first time she came to the stables, when you were there. I watched them from the door.’

  ‘Chatting freely about what?’ Andrew frowned. ‘What does old Ma Foscott know about anything except nags?’

  ‘Oh, Lord knows. I wouldn’t mind betting she was telling the police all about Eli’s family. Selina is a local, you know. Her family has lived here for yonks. I really hope the police aren’t going to badger poor old Eli. It’s not his fault someone left a body in one of his barns. But there’s the history of the place which is unfortunate, to say the least. Do you think the police will suspect Eli? It would be awful, Andrew. Eli wouldn’t hurt a fly and anyway, he wouldn’t report it to the police if he’d left someone for dead in his barn, would
he?’

  He leaned across the table and patted her hand. ‘Don’t worry about Eli. He’s more than capable of taking care of himself. I don’t suppose for a minute that the police will suspect him of anything. Moving clapped-out fridges round the country hasn’t become illegal, has it?’

  Penny frowned. ‘You have to take them to special places to dispose of them, don’t you? Because of CF gases and all the rest of it.’

  ‘If the cops are investigating murder, I don’t think they’ll be worried what Eli does with his old fridges. Incidentally, I don’t know why you’re so sorry for the old monster. He probably makes a fortune out of his scrap. There’s definitely money in it. There’s a worldwide metal shortage at the moment; thieves pinch it from everywhere, church roofs, town square war memorials, you name it.’

  ‘Eli’s not a thief!’ Penny was shocked. ‘I don’t think he’s got any lead roofing or valuable bronze figures up there at the farm. At least I’ve never seen any; just stacks and stacks of clapped-out freezer cabinets and cookers. He doesn’t seem to do anything with them but let them rust. Besides, I don’t think money means anything to Eli.’

  She leaned across the table, her hair falling forward to frame her earnest face. ‘They opened up the farmhouse, you know, unbarred the door and went in, tramping all over the place. That has upset Eli dreadfully. It’s been closed up since that awful business of his brother going bonkers and shooting their parents.’

  ‘Did they now?’ Andrew raised his eyebrows and pulled a face. ‘I wish I’d been there. I’d love to see inside that spooky old place. Is it still open? We could sneak up there and take a look.’

  ‘You might. I wouldn’t, not if you paid me.’ Penny shivered. ‘Anyway, it’s not still open. Eli was up there this afternoon with load of planks, boarding it all up again. I could hear him from the stables, hammering away up there.’

  ‘I bet the cops don’t know he’s done that. They might call that tampering with a crime scene. But what the heck, I don’t suppose there was anything in there but mice.’ Andrew leaned his forearms on the table and rested on them, bringing his face closer to hers. ‘I didn’t bring us out for the evening to talk about Eli, you know, or the body that turned up in his cowshed.’