by Jane Adams
Mike marvelled at just how cut off from the world the two had become. This house was less than two miles from Ancaster and yet it might have been in another world. The woman at the post office, from where they’d finally got directions to this forsaken place, had been voluble when once set in motion.
‘No one goes there you see. It’s not that we don’t care, you understand, but they don’t encourage help. She comes in here sometimes, but not often and when she does . . .’ She waved a hand in the air as though trying to dissipate smoke.
‘Well, you know, the smell. I don’t suppose she’s bathed in years.’
‘You say no one goes there,’ Mike queried. ‘What about post?’
‘What post? Must be years since they got any. Lord alone knows how they live. They say there’s money hidden all over the house, but,’ she laughed as though at some common joke, ‘I doubt any self-respecting thief’d want to break in there. I mean, you never know what you might catch.’
Mike had let her run on a bit, then taken his leave and they had made their way out here. They, she’d said . . .
Thoughtfully, he looked at the house again. No gas, no electricity, no mains water. Apparently there was a well in the garden, so the postmistress had informed him and given him a lecture on comparative water quality into the bargain.
There was something else his search at the records’ office had told him. There had been issued no certificate of death for Albert J. Cooper either a decade ago, or since. Could Liza have buried him somewhere and not notified death?
He picked the gate up, lifting it on its single rusting hinge and swung it awkwardly aside, led the four constables with him through the overgrown front garden and down the side of the house into the brick-floored yard at the back.
‘You two,’ he directed, ‘try the house doors.’
He directed the others towards the attached outbuildings and stood in the centre of the yard looking around at the devastation that had once been a home.
A flicker of movement caught his attention and he gazed up at the dark upper windows. Curtains half-hung, half-sagged from overstretched wires. One pair closed completely, the others slightly parted. He peered hard, willing whatever he’d half seen to move again. The two constables had circled the house and come back to the rear door.
‘No open windows, sir, and the front door’s probably bolted.’
He nodded impatiently. ‘Then you’d better try the back, break the blasted thing down if you have to.’
He saw them exchange a glance and turned away, he couldn’t blame them for not wanting to go in. Even from outside the place stank, though from the look of it, they’d have little problem with the door, even from where he stood he could see that it was rotting on its hinges.
‘Sir, I think you’d better look.’
The officer emerged from one of the brick-built sheds looking more than a little sick. Mike walked swiftly over and went inside. Until the officer had disturbed it the door had been firmly shut and the full impact of the smell hit him like some solid, suffocating force.
‘Christ Almighty.’
‘Yes, sir,’ the young man said, eyes watering in sympathy.
Mike pushed the door open to its fullest extent and stepped back to survey the scene from outside, reaching into his pocket for the flashlight he’d remembered to bring this time. This was the place. Nothing was more certain.
Human excrement littered one comer, in another lay a heap of filthy, decaying blankets and old sacking. Even from here they stank of urine. But what clinched it for Mike, what put beyond doubt that this was the place Sara had been kept, was the narrow strip of pale blue ribbon tied around a little tail of fair hair. Someone had fastened it to a nail hammered into the shed wall. More than anything else in this hell-hole, that sickened him the most . . .
‘Sir.’ The young officer was pointing. Mike looked; above the narrow window hung two more scraps of faded ribbon, one red and one green. One, tied carefully around a strand of dirty blonde hair, straight, without a hint of curl and about six inches long. The other, the green, encircled a delicate flowering of dark brown curls. The ribbon was frayed and rotten but someone . . . Liza? . . . had taken care to keep the soft curls free of cobwebs, of the thick layer of dust and grime that overlaid everything else.
Sadly, he stepped back outside, and let his gaze travel thoughtfully around the weed-infested yard. The other officer emerged from his search of the other buildings, pulling cobwebs from his clothes and hair.
‘What’s in there?’ Mike demanded. ‘Apart from spiders.’
The constable grinned, grateful to find some relief from the grim reality of the situation.
‘An old pram. Funny thing is, sir, it’s clean. Well,’ he amended, ‘sort of clean, like it’s been used recently.’
Mike nodded. Had it been used to take Sara back to the Greenway? He was about to take a look for himself when a call from the house made him turn.
‘He’s here, sir. In one of the bedrooms.’
Mike strode across the yard. ‘Alive?’
‘Yes, sir.’
He pushed by the officer and began to climb the stairs, hearing behind him the officer remark, ‘Just how can people stand to live like this?’
He tried to be professional enough not to ask himself such daft questions, but even so . . . the smell, the amount of dirt . . . Mike found it hard to comprehend.
The other constable stood uncertainly outside the door to the bedroom. Mike entered and motioned him inside. The room was dark, half-shut curtains and windows coated both inside and out in decades of grime added to the gloom. An old man sat at the end of the bed. Despite his surrounding conditions and his age, there was nothing emaciated or decayed about him. There was still a sense of strength, of purpose, of sternness in the way he sat, square-shouldered and straight-backed.
‘Mr Cooper?’ Mike spoke gently, uncertain of what approach to take.
The man did not speak, but turned his eyes directly onto Mike. Mike felt a moment of almost superstitious panic, felt the young man at his side flinch, as though the look had been directed at him.
‘I knew you would come.’ The voice was husky as though long out of use, but there was no weakness in it. ‘I told her there was no other way. She should have let me see to it like last time.’ He shrugged slightly as though resigned to the fact that life always let him down.
Mike waited, fearful of breaking the thread.
‘She said she’d see to it this time, said she’d take her to the hill, do it there, but I never believed her. Weak, she was. Just left the child there, under the hedge for just anyone to find. Thought she could come back and lie to me, but I won’t hold with that. Not with lying. So I followed her.’
He looked down at the floor then as though he’d said all he wanted to say. Mike had stood, frozen, as the man spoke. Suddenly, he was terrified that he would say no more. That he would refuse to speak and the rest of the story would remain untold. With difficulty, he held back on the impulse to shout, to demand, instead he spoke softly, words dropping gently into the stillness, ‘And so you killed her.’
The man lifted his head again, eyes widened as though surprised that Mike should want clarification.
‘Of course I did. What else was there to do? I knew she’d lied to me so I took wood from the woodpile.’ He paused sadly, then went on. ‘I didn’t have time for the child. There was a woman running down the hill and I could hear people shouting so I came home.’
‘And the wood you hit her with,’ Mike asked. ‘What did you do with that?’
Cooper glared at him indignantly as though the question were beneath contempt. ‘Not a countryman, are you?’
Mike was startled but he answered slowly, ‘No, I’m not.’
‘Ah, I thought not. Wouldn’t need to ask such damn, fool questions if you were.’ He paused, then, speaking slowly and patiently he said, ‘Firewood belongs on the woodpile. I put it back there ready for winter.’ He shook his head despairingly
at Mike. ‘Young folk. No idea, have you? Think I’d go wasting good firewood?’ He shook his head again and stared down at the floor in fixed concentration. He did not even move to protest as Mike took his arm and led him away to the waiting car.
Chapter 22
It was two more weeks before the funerals of Suzanne Ashmore and Emma Cooper took place. Suzanne’s, in a large urban cemetery in the city where her parents now lived. Emma’s in the churchyard of the village where her short life had ended so tragically. Mike attended both, so did John Tynan.
Suzie Ashmore’s funeral hilltop was well attended. Mike stood well back out of the way of those who had more right to be there. It was a bright September afternoon with just the slightest touch of autumn licking the trees that lined the route to the crematorium.
The service had begun when he saw Cassie and Fergus slip quietly into the church and stand almost unnoticed at the back. Suzanne’s mother turned once to look at them, then turned away, her back a solid wall of disapproval. Mike shook his head sadly. He supposed it was too late to heal this kind of breach, founded as it was purely on grief, and beyond reason. He looked across and smiled at Cassie. Dr Lucas said that her recovery was exceeding all expectations, that she was ready to begin her life again. Mike was glad for them, for himself too. His friendship with Maria Lucas was blossoming and although he sensed that it would be a long time before either of them was ready to make a commitment, he felt that he too was beginning his life over.
He pulled his mind somewhat reluctantly back to the present, aware that the service was almost over and that he should at least try to find the right page in the hymn book.
Behind him there was a slight draught and a soft thud. He knew that Cassie and Fergus had chosen their moment to leave.
The life and death of Emma Cooper was celebrated quietly a few days later. A couple of photographers turned up to record the event which warranted a paragraph or two in the local papers but other than that the funeral party was made up of Mike, Tynan and the others whose lives had been so shadowed by the consequences of this child’s death.
It was on Mike’s mind that in a few days’ time there would be another funeral. That of Albert Cooper, found hanged by a bed sheet in a remand cell.
And, thought Mike, irritably, he’d said not a word more about anything since their brief conversation that day at the Coopers’ cottage.
He stood between the Thomas’s and the Malthams as Emma’s body was consigned once more to the earth, thinking how different this had been from the funeral of Suzie Ashmore.
He looked across at the Cassidys. Quite a number of the local people had sent flowers, some attended the church service, but only the Cassidys had come to the graveside. Mike watched them as they stood there, keeping close to each other, their daughter safely between them. He thought how differently it might all have turned out . . . then forced himself not to think about it and bent with the others to drop a handful of earth into the grave.
It was only as they left the churchyard that Mike noticed Cassie. She still held flowers in her hand.
‘Did you forget?’ he asked her. ‘I’ll walk you back up if you want.’
Cassie smiled at him and shook her head. ‘We’ve already left flowers on the grave,’ she said. ‘I want to take these to Tan’s hill. It’s just my way of finishing things properly.’
‘We’d like you to come too,’ Fergus said. It was an invitation that evidently included Tynan as well.
They walked in silence for several minutes, an odd, solemn procession. Then Anna asked, ‘Do we know why he took Sara?’
Mike shook his head. ‘We can only make guesses,’ he said. ‘I talked to her after Cooper was arrested, she remembered seeing him there once, on Tan’s hill, or rather, she remembered seeing an old man talking, she thought, to himself. It scared her and she ran away.’
‘Maybe he thought she’d found the body, same as Suzie did?’
‘Maybe, we’ll never know now.’
Anna nodded slowly. Simon reached across and took her hand. He’d been unusually silent until now. ‘It might seem far-fetched but have any of you noticed how like Suzie she looks? Sara Jane, I mean. Seeing her there, on the hill, it must have been as if she’d come back to haunt him.’
No one commented, it didn’t seem necessary and Mike, for one, had developed a superstitious caution against violating the mystical aspects of this whole business. There were still so many things he didn’t understand, like the child’s clothes in the back of the police car and that strange dream Cassie had related to him when he’d gone to see her the day after Cooper’s arrest. The meticulous and absurdly accurate detail she had been able to recall.
‘You didn’t do it,’ he had told her, suddenly anxious that she might take on this further burden of guilt.
To his relief and surprise she had laughed. ‘I know I didn’t,’ she said. ‘But it felt good, like revenge without the consequences I suppose.’
They’d reached the mouth of the Greenway now. Anna stopped and sat down on the grass.
‘Aren’t you going any further?’ Tynan asked her.
She shook her head. ‘Call me superstitious if you like, but wild horses wouldn’t drag me up there again.’ Unconsciously, she moved a hand to touch her abdomen, already aware of the new life growing there.
Tynan smiled. ‘You know,’ he said, ‘I’m not sure I want to go either.’
Anna patted the ground beside her. ‘Have a seat.’
Mike, Fergus and Cassie began to walk on alone, then Cassie stopped abruptly. ‘I can’t,’ she said softly. Fergus turned to kiss her gently then took the flowers from her hand.
‘Then let me.’
Cassie nodded, relieved, and they watched her as she walked the short distance back to the others.
Fergus and Mike stood for quite some time on the hilltop. They’d placed the flowers where the hidey hole had once been. Already the hawthorn and brambles were growing back, healing the manmade wound that gaped in the hedge-side. Then they’d gone back and stood on the hill looking down at the Greenway, stretching out, straight but for the kink around the hill.
The afternoon was warm, a slight breeze keeping it from being hot. Far off out to sea there was a darkening, as though rain clouds gathered and already the strip of sea that they could glimpse from the hill top looked muddied, anticipating the dark of storm clouds.
‘I think we should go now,’ Fergus said, his voice sharpened slightly as though something troubled him.
As they hurried back along the pathway, it seemed to Mike that there was a slight shimmering in the air, like a displaced heat haze moving before his eyes and that the ground seemed to shift beneath his feet. The hedges — high and solid though he knew them to be — blurred suddenly as though seen through misted glass.
He felt panic rising, choking him, looked across at Fergus and saw the same emotions written on the other man’s face.
Instinctively, they began to run, fleeing in unashamed panic from a place that no longer welcomed them.
But it seemed that the sound of laughter pursued them down the high-hedged pathway, and, forcing himself to look back for an instant, Mike saw that two figures stood, small and childlike, against the blue sky on the crest of Tan’s hill.
THE END
DETECTIVE MIKE CROFT SERIES
Book 1: The Greenway
Book 2: The Secrets
Book 3: Their Final Moments
Book 4: The Liar
Book 2: THE SECRETS
An addictive crime thriller full of absolutely breathtaking twists
JANE ADAMS
First published as “Cast The First Stone” in 1996 by Macmillan
Revised edition 2019
Joffe Books, London
www.joffebooks.com
FIRST PUBLISHED BY MACMILLAN IN 1996 AS “CAST THE FIRST STONE.”
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organisations, places and events are either the product of the author�
�s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental. The spelling used is British English except where fidelity to the author’s rendering of accent or dialect supersedes this. The right of Jane Adams to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
We hate typos too but sometimes they slip through. Please send any errors you find to [email protected]
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©Jane Adams
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THERE IS A GLOSSARY OF ENGLISH SLANG IN THE BACK OF THIS BOOK FOR US READERS.
For Rachel, without whom Mike Croft might still be nameless.
And for Kay and Penny and the SCRIBO ‘criminals’. Thanks.
Prologue
The boy in the red sweatshirt looked warily at the man who’d bought him chips and coffee. He probably shouldn’t have accepted them, but the man had seemed OK. He had that ID card and everything, with his photo and an official-looking logo. Anyway, Ryan had felt half starved and his money ran out yesterday. He’d not done too well at begging for cash. Kept moving on, running scared every time he saw a policeman.
‘Like I told you,’ the man was saying, ‘we’ve got this small hostel. It’s not much, but it’s clean and warm and there’s a phone. You can call home, talk to your mum and dad, set their minds at rest.’
Ryan shook his head, tore his gaze from the man and looked across the crowded station cafe. The rush and flow of people, crossing and re-crossing the platform, all with places to go, people to meet. Somewhere to belong.