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

by Granger, Ann

  And CID doesn’t drop in for a pint, he might have said, but hadn’t, thought Jess. Ferris sank into an armchair opposite her and stared thoughtfully into his coffee mug, as if not quite sure what kind of brew he’d made.

  ‘When did you go to the Foot?’ Jess asked, looking back to the leaflet.

  ‘Sunday morning, this weekend just gone. Nice place. Penny might like it, I think.’

  ‘Well,’ Jess told him, ‘that lessens the impact of this.’ She held out her photograph to him. ‘I brought it to see if you recognised anyone in it, noticed anyone like any of those people around Cricket Farm or anywhere else, in Cheltenham perhaps, in a restaurant or a pub. But you’ve already seen the photo; it’s in that leaflet.’

  ‘I know there’s a picture of the pub and its staff in the leaflet,’ Ferris said, taking the enlargement from her. ‘But I didn’t study it. I was more interested in the prices on the sample menu. They were, I have to say, rather steep. But the food’s supposed to be good and I, for one, am getting rather fed up with chips.’

  ‘I wanted to show it to you earlier. I had rather hoped to find you at the stables on Wednesday morning but you weren’t there, then other things turned up. I had to go up to London and this morning I’ve been to see Reggie Foscott. We are investigating another death, besides that of the girl found at Cricket Farm. Lucas Burton, a local businessman.’ Jess waited to see how mention of Burton’s name would be received.

  ‘Ah,’ said Ferris, looking rather embarrassed. ‘I did wonder if I should have rung you first thing this morning. I saw in the paper that one of my clients appears to have met his maker. He was found in his garage, the rag said. Perhaps he found someone trying to steal his Merc. Lucas Burton, poor chap. Who’d have thought it? Reggie’s handling the will, I suppose? He’ll be in touch with me pretty soon, if he is. I’ll give him a ring.’

  ‘You know the Foscotts quite well,’ Jess observed, ‘one way and another. Selina’s daughter keeps her pony at Berryhill stables.’

  ‘I wouldn’t say I knew them well. I know Reggie casually, odd civic occasion, drinks parties, that kind of thing. Occasionally our paths have crossed professionally. Now I’m headed for divorce, I suppose I’ll be seeing a lot more of him. As for Selina, I’m pleased to say I’ve only ever encountered her at the stables. Reggie’s OK,’ added Ferris. ‘His wife is a terrible old bat and word has it she rules him with a rod of iron.’

  ‘Did you hear that she had a close encounter with a silver-grey Mercedes on leaving the stable yard on the Friday the body was found at the farm?’

  He shook his head. ‘No. Ah, you think it was the same car Penny spotted earlier?’

  ‘We think it was Lucas Burton’s car.’

  There was a silence. ‘Merry hell,’ said Ferris.

  ‘You obviously knew he had a Mercedes.’

  ‘Yes, I knew. He came here in it. Look, I didn’t think it was his car Penny saw! Why should I? His car wasn’t the only Merc around and why on earth should Lucas go out to Cricket Farm? Oh . . .’ He sat back and stared at her. ‘You don’t think . . . ? Lucas? Oh, come off it. If Lucas was playing around with a barmaid, he could have got rid of her without wringing her neck. He’d have paid her off. He was a professional bachelor, you know. That’s how he described himself. Not a bad idea, perhaps. But, honestly, do you think Lucas is in the frame for this murder at Cricket?’

  ‘We don’t think anything, Mr Ferris,’ Jess said firmly. ‘We are still in the middle of enquiries. But Lucas Burton does seem to have been at the scene on the day in question and we had been hoping to question him. Now, obviously, we can’t. Perhaps someone didn’t want us to. Anything you can tell us about him would be helpful. He seems to have been an excessively private man.’

  Ferris chewed at his lower lip and studied Jess for a moment. ‘Sorry, I can’t tell you a load of salacious detail about Lucas. I would if I could. Or, given he got himself murdered, I suppose I could peddle my gossip to the tabloids, if I had any. That is a joke, by the way! He was my client and anything I know about him I’d treat as confidential. With the exception of the police, of course. I really would tell you anything I knew that I thought might help you, but it wasn’t a personal friendship; it was a business relationship, pure and simple. I keep his tax papers but you’ll have to get authority to look at those, won’t you? I don’t think I can just open them up for you. At least, not until I’ve discussed the legal position with Reggie. I’m not a lawyer; I’m a number-cruncher.’

  ‘Well, actually, I haven’t come about Burton today,’ Jess told him, ‘although anything you can remember about him will be useful. If you do think of anything, call me. I came about that photo.’

  He sat back, the photo in his hands, and frowned at it. ‘No, don’t know any of them. Hang on, this young chap! I think he was at the pub on Sunday morning when I was there. He served me in the bar.’

  ‘No one else? How about the girls?’

  Ferris shook his head. ‘Didn’t see either of them, sure of it.’

  ‘Thanks.’ Jess took back the photo. ‘We’re releasing this to the press tomorrow and it will be in the papers, so perhaps we’ll have some luck. Someone might have seen one of the girls.’

  ‘Just a minute!’ exclaimed Ferris. ‘I’m being thick, aren’t I? The dead girl worked at the Foot to the Ground, so one of them is her. Which one?’ He reached for photo again.

  Jess returned it to him. He studied it again and shook his head. ‘Still don’t know her. Pretty kid, though. If she took Lucas’s eye, I wouldn’t blame him.’

  ‘Thank you for looking again,’ said Jess politely, taking the photo back for a second time and returning it to the backpack. She took a sip or two of the coffee. ‘Nice coffee but I’m afraid I can’t stay to finish it. Thanks for your time. You’ll want to get on with your packing.’

  ‘Karen’s packing,’ he corrected her.

  He stood on his front doorstep to wave her goodbye. Jess got into her car. She drove down the road and round the corner where she stopped again. For a moment or two she sat there, sunk in thought.

  I’m being thick . . . Ferris had said to her not ten minutes earlier. But he wasn’t thick. He was a pretty sharp type, and not averse to gently sticking the knife into the back of his late good client, Lucas Burton. Oh, Lucas would’ve paid her off . . . but if she took his eye, I wouldn’t blame him. Ha! I know a diversionary technique when I hear it, Mr Ferris. You knew the dead girl had worked at the Foot to the Ground; that’s now common knowledge. So when shown a picture of the staff – or when you saw in your own leaflet that there was a group snapshot – you must have realised the dead girl was among those shown.

  ‘Which one?’ he’d asked Jess, on taking the photo back for a second look. Jess hadn’t replied to his question or pointed out Eva. Yet Ferris, without the information, had still replied, ‘I don’t know her.’

  That might have been no more than a slip of the tongue. He might have meant, he didn’t know either girl. But that wasn’t what he’d said. ‘I don’t know her.’ He’d followed that with a comment of ‘pretty kid’.

  He knew which girl to look at.

  Jess drummed her fingers on the steering wheel. Last Thursday night Ferris and Penny Gower went to eat at the Hart. Jess and Tom had seen them there. Earlier that day, Jess had shown Eli and Penny the enlarged photo. Penny must have told Ferris about her visit to the stables. He knew Jess was showing the photo around. So had Ferris gone to the Foot to the Ground on Sunday morning in order to get a copy of the leaflet and the photo it contained to study it himself? Out of curiosity? Or because the possibility of a good likeness of Eva Zelená in the hands of the police, a photo they would almost certainly release to the press, worried him? He’d picked a good time to visit the pub. Sunday would be a busy time at the Foot, probably there would be weekend visitors as well as locals, so Ferris wouldn’t have stood out in the crowd as not being a regular.

  Jess got out of her car and locked it up. She walked back to Fer
ris’s house, approaching it cautiously in case he was outside by the boxes. But there was no sign of him. Still looking over her shoulder towards the house (and hoping no other neighbour was watching who might come running out to ask what she was doing), she sidled past the boxes to the half-opened garage door. An attempt to peer under it wasn’t satisfactory. She pushed it up slowly, hoping the creak wouldn’t be audible from the house.

  Two cars were parked side by side within. One was Ferris’s dark blue Passat. She’d seen that the first time she’d gone to the stables. The other was a small silver Citroën Saxo. It must belong to the absent Karen. Ferris was indeed by no means ‘thick’. He’d been intelligent enough not to use his own car when taking out his Czech girlfriend, ‘moonlighting’ from his supposed relationship with Penny Gower. Instead he’d used his wife’s car and by a stroke of luck the lovelorn David Jones had spotted it, with Eva in it. But David hadn’t seen the driver, that morning he’d hidden behind the hedge, which had been a stroke of luck for Andrew Ferris. Otherwise, when David served him in the bar of the Foot to the Ground on Sunday, he might have recognised him. Although Ferris had been careful never to collect Eva from the pub or return her there, he had taken a risk in going there on Sunday. Of course, he didn’t know about David observing his tryst with Eva. Still, it had been a gamble and he wouldn’t have done it if he hadn’t been worried. With reason – some newspaper reader might recognise Eva’s picture and remember when and where he’d seen her, and with whom.

  That was her last conscious thought. She felt a sudden sharp pain originating at the back of her head. Stars danced and then there was blackness.

  She rose slowly through a black soup, swimming ever upward seeking the surface and light, but it eluded her. How much further could it be? The stars were still there but they were smaller and came in shoals like little silver fish, darting across her brain from one side to the other. She moved her head and heard herself exclaim in pain. She struggled to think coherently, issuing herself orders. Take it easy, Jess. Try again slowly. That’s better.

  Now she dared to open her eyes and to her horror it was still dark. Was she in a box? In a cave? No, she was in a darkened room, a bedroom, lying flat on her back on a double bed. The room smelled very bad, musty and damp. It was a sort of graveyard smell. She turned her head again to one side – careful, now! The pain had stabbed viciously in response. Something was rotting very close to her nostrils. She must sit up. She must get away from this awful smell. She must make sure she could sit up. She had to establish she was uninjured and also not tied up. She had to find out just where she was.

  She pushed herself upright to a seated position using both arms and her hands, as she pressed downwards, sank into something soft, very cold and damp. Light came into the room through chinks in windows that appeared to be boarded up. Her eyes were adjusting to the gloom but now she could make out furniture. Not Ferris’s house; that was for sure.

  Suddenly she knew where she was: in the main bedroom at Cricket Farm. She lay on the bed last occupied by the slaughtered Smith parents and probably on the same bedding, last warmed by their doomed bodies and now rotting.

  Despite her throbbing head, she couldn’t get away from the bed fast enough. She swung her legs to the floor, still exclaiming in pain, and tried to stand up. But her legs buckled, a blinding white light flashed through her head, and she sank back to sit on the edge of the bed, on the mouldering satin eiderdown, her feet on the floor.

  Give yourself time, Jess! she instructed herself. Count up to ten. Right, that’s better. How had she got here? Andrew Ferris had brought her. She’d been so busy looking at Karen’s silver car, she’d failed to hear his approach. Was this how he’d killed Burton? Burton had died in his garage, where he’d been repairing the scratch on his car. Had Ferris crept up, spanner in hand? But, if so, he’d hit Burton an awful lot harder than he’d hit Jess. Why kill his client? Almost certainly something to do with Burton having been at the farm and finding the body. But why had Burton been at Cricket Farm?

  Sort that one out later, Jess continued her lecture to herself. Your mind isn’t up to dealing with more than one thing at a time right now. I don’t know why he killed Burton, but he didn’t mean to kill me. He just wanted to get me out of the way. So he’s dumped me at Cricket Farm. Why here? What was his purpose? To buy time in which to escape? We’ll find him. He must have known I’d come round and raise the alarm.

  Raise the alarm . . . Jess looked around for her backpack but it was nowhere to be seen. It held her mobile phone and its loss meant she couldn’t call for help. She would have to get out of here first and find a phone. If she went down the hill to the stables, Penny might be there and she’d have a mobile.

  But he’d overlooked her wristwatch. She still wore that. Jess tried to read the time on the dial but the light was too poor. She got to her feet and managed this time to stay upright. She stumbled to the window and held her wrist up to the light filtering through the gaps in the boards. Five o’clock.

  Five o’clock! Had she been here unconscious for half the day? She had to get out of here. Jess turned towards the door and froze.

  She wasn’t alone. There was someone in the room with her. Ferris? Her heart leaped in alarm. Had he come back for her already? No, not Ferris. Her companion, whoever he was, was shorter. Ferris stood over six feet. Eli? The figure standing by the door was much his build, stocky and wearing shabby clothes. Yes, Eli, of course! Who else? He’d come to check on his property and, finding her unexpectedly stretched out on his late parents’ bed, was wondering what on earth she was doing there, indeed in his house. He’d probably got as much of a shock as she had. But the needed help was at hand.

  ‘Eli?’ Jess called eagerly.

  The man didn’t answer and then she realised that it wasn’t Eli after all. It was a man she’d never seen before, resembling Eli but rather younger. He had an odd sort of smirk on his face and what appeared to be a rope trailing over his shoulder. The phrase ‘blood ran cold’ had never seemed anything but a literary fancy to her before. But that was exactly how she felt now, chilled to the marrow.

  ‘Who are you?’ she demanded, trying to keep her voice steady but hearing a tremulous quiver in it despite her efforts.

  Receiving no answer, her training kicked in. She decided to take action and walked as firmly towards him as she could. ‘I am a police officer!’ she said more sternly, thinking how foolish it sounded. She fumbled in her jacket pocket for her ID but it had gone. Ferris had removed it in his thorough way, as he removed all his victims’ small portable possessions. She couldn’t prove it if challenged.

  In the event, she had no need. No request came. The shadowy figure’s response to her claim was extraordinary: he simply faded away.

  This wasn’t possible. Her heart was thumping painfully. She’d seen him, for goodness’ sake! Jess blinked, tried to shake her head and quickly thought better of it. She edged closer and stretched out her hand to where he had stood. It brushed the old dressing gown hanging on the coat hook on the back of the door, disturbing ancient dust that rose up and tickled her nostrils. Now she saw that the tasselled silk cord serving as a belt was looped up somehow over the collar. That was what had appeared as a rope.

  A mixture of emotions rushed over her: relief, embarrassment, even an impulse to laugh.

  ‘You really have been affected by that bang on the head, Jess!’ she told herself aloud. And spending too much time poring over the transcripts of statements made by Nathan and Eli and Doreen Warble. Imagining this old dressing gown was a person, was Nathan Smith, for pity’s sake! What next?

  Her priority must be to get out of the house before Ferris returned. There was no time to loiter here seeing things.

  Jess let herself out of the bedroom and made her way cautiously downstairs. She couldn’t be sure Ferris wasn’t somewhere nearby, still couldn’t explain why he’d brought her here. Her first guess, in the bedroom, had been that he wanted to give himself time. It was a
n unsatisfactory explanation, not logical. To run? They’d track him down, sooner or later. He must know that. Or to do something else? What? All his careful plans had been thrown into disarray when Jess saw his wife’s car. He probably wasn’t thinking straight any longer. He was panicking and a complete loose cannon.

  But neither was she able to order her thoughts. She could pose the questions but not grasp any answers. Her head ached and there was a persistent buzz in her ears. Ferris might be losing his grip but she, Jess, mustn’t; and she was afraid she was doing just that. No, she must think logically and that meant get out of here immediately.

  But getting out of the place proved more difficult than she’d imagined. The windows downstairs were better barred than those upstairs. The front door was well secured. She went into the kitchen and rattled at the back door but that had been locked too. The washhouse! Jess darted in there, avoiding the sight of the old copper in case she should start imagining the bloody body of Millie Smith propped against it. She didn’t trust the recent blow to the head not to play more tricks on her.

  She gave the handle of the washhouse door a savage jerk. The catch gave way and it flew open inward so that she stumbled back. But exit was still barred by three stout wide wooden planks hammered horizontally across the opening. To crawl under them wasn’t possible; the gap was too narrow. She had to knock out at least a couple.

  Jess went back into the kitchen and looked for something suitable to use as a battering ram. There was a heavy, cast-iron pan on the stove with a pair of handles fixed to the rim. She took it out to the washhouse and, grasping a handle in either hand and holding the pan in front of her, ran at the middle plank. She collided with it with a deafening crash but although it shuddered, it stayed fast. Ferris, or someone, had made a good job of it, making sure she wouldn’t escape easily. Jess took another run at it and this time was rewarded by a snapping sound. Nails had been loosened sufficiently to allow one end of the plank to be pushed outward.