by Penny Grubb
‘It’s your decision, but just check with Jennifer before you commit to anything. She knows the area. Kate Ronsen hasn’t been here five minutes.’
Chapter 19
Annie sat on into the darkening evening after Nicole had drained her glass and left. A gust of wind plucked an empty crisp packet from a small boy’s hands as he went to push it into the bin. He chased after it, laughing, as it eddied round the tables.
There was unfinished business within reach and this was too good an opportunity to miss. A clump of trees across the main road bowed their branches towards her. Annie watched and made calculations. The wind was blowing off the estuary and with enough force that the rustling of the leaves was audible here in the shelter of the pub garden. Closer to the water, it would be louder.
She ran the idea through her head. A stiff breeze to orchestrate the flapping canvas of the marquee, and in the right direction to keep her downwind of the dogs as long they weren’t loose. It was the perfect opportunity to close the Longs’ case once and for all.
The shadows lengthened around her as she dawdled over her lemonade. They served a nice looking lasagne here. That and a cup of coffee would insulate her against the night air. After ordering at the bar, she wandered out to the car to check she had everything she needed.
Her long-sleeved black T-shirt was scrunched in a corner of the boot. It badly needed a wash, but she’d learnt on a long-ago surveillance-and-tracking course that dogs were less likely to raise the alarm at the scent of unwashed bodies than clean ones. Thin dark gloves … balaclava … slim torch that would shine a discreet but sharp pencil beam. Picklocks masquerading as a key fob and the camera on her phone completed the kit. She returned to her table to wait.
Her food came and she ate hungrily. Her plate and glass were cleared away, and she waited as night closed in. Down in the rural wilds by the estuary, there would be a cloying darkness to provide a cloak of invisibility.
Annie drove as close as she dared to the Morgans, then killed the car’s headlights and inched forward on sidelights only. A couple of hundred metres from her target, she pulled on to the verge and prepared to make the rest of the journey on foot.
The wind blew in her face, whistling across from the sea, making her scrunch her eyes against the sting of the salt-laden air. She trod carefully, even though the gusts blew hard enough to mask the sound of her footsteps. Reaching the gate, she rested her gloved hand on top of it and rattled it gently. If the dogs had access to the yard, she wanted to know now before she was inside there with them.
Nothing.
A stout padlocked chain secured the gate. She felt the way the links were looped over and through the metal bars. Not too hard to pick, she judged, but in the darkness, there was a real danger of it clanking noisily free. Chances were that the Morgans had fastened this gate exactly the same way every night for years. It would be hard to ensure the same alignment if she tried to redo it from the outside when she left, and her plan was to avoid leaving any trace behind her.
She pictured Sheryl Long on her spindly heels contemplating this gate and knew she need have no lingering doubt about whether or not the woman had been in here.
The breeze cut through the undergrowth in a muted roar that underlay the sharper sounds of something banging rhythmically against a wall, and the rapid-fire crack-crack-crack of the canvas from the far side of the yard. Annie rattled the gate again, louder, wanting to be sure before she climbed inside.
The house remained a grey silhouette, but any one of the inkblack shadows could conceal the dogs. The darkness painted strange dancing shapes at the edge of her vision.
She reached out with both hands to get a firm grip on the gate, braced herself and jumped up, rolling sideways over the top and landing as gently as she could on the gravel.
For a minute, she stayed very still.
No lights. No sound other than the wind in the undergrowth and the rhythmic crack of the canvas.
She picked her way across the yard, through the darkness, not risking the torch beam yet. When she gained the tall shed, she eased the latch and pulled. It stood firm against her. Now she must risk the torch and turned her back to the house to shield the pencil-beam as she inspected the door. It was fastened with an old double-lever lock, sturdy and hard-wearing but no trouble work open with the crudest of picklocks. She flicked off the torch and slipped it back in her pocket.
Within moments, the lock tumblers snapped back. Annie eased the door just wide enough to squeeze inside and pulled it shut behind her. At once, the air stilled, the noise of the wind became muted. She played the torch beam carefully, knowing there might be cracks in the fabric of the barn that would let light glint through.
Praying not to illuminate the shining eyes of a waking dog, she began a structured sweep around the space.
A car.
Large round straw bales piled high.
A forklift truck.
Dirt and detritus in the corners, garden tools, hay forks, oversized sweeping brushes.
More canvas, but not the white of the wedding canvas, this was blue with sturdy ropes threaded through metal reinforced holes.
She took a picture of the uneven mound, then pulled aside the blue sheet, which crackled as it slid off what looked like a heap of engine parts. She shone the torch down into the tangle of oily metal and photographed it to show what had been hidden.
After moving the canvas back into place, she moved outward scanning every square metre. If Sheryl stuck to her story of having been in here, despite that gate and locked door, Annie would not leave her with any opening to say the search hadn’t been thorough enough. She shone the torch along the edges and through the cracks of the great mound of bales as she moved to the back of the shed.
It was here she came across the wheelbarrow, its handles showing from beneath another canvas mound. It surprised her, as apparent confirmation of Sheryl’s story, but was in keeping with the motley collection the Morgans kept in here. The pictures would be useful.
‘Here’s the wheelbarrow. Look, nothing in it.’
What would Sheryl say to that?
Annie held the torch in her mouth to free both hands to lift the stretch of blue canvas, and as the shape became clear, she felt her eyes widen in surprise. She looked at the heaped sacking and imagined Sheryl, nervy and frightened, seeing it as a slumped human form. It was plain this was what she’d mistaken for a body. Annie reconstructed the tale as she lifted the blue cover free enough to be able to take a picture of the whole thing. Sheryl couldn’t have been in here. She had seen the Morgans pushing the wheelbarrow into the shed. Her imagination had made up the rest.
Whatever the truth of it, here was the root of the story.
Annie took pictures of the curled sacking from different angles, then held the torch between her teeth as she began to unpick the wrapping. It wasn’t the stout material of the canvas sheeting and she had to concentrate not to tear it. She took it slowly so as to be able to rewrap it, determined to leave no trace of her visit.
Reaching under the cloth, she eased the handle of some kind of tool so that she could slide the material free. The torch, between her teeth, wouldn’t stay steady and played distracting patterns across the sacking. She stopped to put it in her pocket, and carried on by touch in the darkness.
As it came loose, the small tines of what felt like a miniature leaf-rake dug into her forearm.
She worked the cloth free, keeping careful hold of the thin handle not wanting a metallic clatter of cascading tools on to the floor. With her other hand, she aimed the camera lens.
But instead of a momentary flash searing the darkness, the click of the button beneath her finger exploded the whole barn into a blaze of light.
Shock coursed through her in a prickle of retreating blood.
Blazing, blinding light. How? Where? What had she done?
Her eyes began to focus as the scene hit. Every aspect of it together.
The rush of the breeze from the open d
oorway … the silhouetted figures …
Tim Morgan, features indistinct in the glare, but outline unmistakable … a shotgun over his arm. The form of a woman beside him, hand grasping a spade or shovel, its blade catching the light.
Instinct immobilized Annie. She saw at once that they too were struggling in the light that seared down from industrialstrength ceiling tubes. Tim’s silhouetted form showed his free hand shading his eyes as he squinted into the big barn.
They’d heard something … seen something … but they hadn’t yet seen her at the back of the barn, partly hidden by the straw bales.
She let her knees soften and bend, lowering herself towards the concrete floor.
As she did so, the barrow and its contents were beside her, inches from her face. Her hand still grasped the thin shaft.
A second shock reignited the fire across on her skin … curled her insides … turned her legs to jelly. She could barely swallow the whimper that rushed to her lips.
The gaping sockets of a skull stared outward, a deep gash displaying its violent end.
Annie’s gloved hand held a long grey bone that ended in curled digits digging into the flesh of her forearm. Desperately fighting an urge to yank her hand free, she eased it back silently.
No time to react to the horror of touching it … no time to take in that Sheryl had been here … really been here … had told the truth…
All her attention must be tuned to hear the Morgans’ footsteps, to know which way to creep round the space to keep hidden from them.
But the thing at her side was too close to ignore. A snake poised to strike. Her eyes were drawn to where the sacking now hung free and the lights had exposed the secret it had covered.
The skull with its gaping sockets stared away from her but the deep gash was clear. One massive fatal blow.
They bludgeon them…
My God, Sheryl, you were right.
Her gaze snapped back to the high mound of straw bales that hid her from the doorway.
Two images burnt themselves on to her mind’s eye.
The glint of light from the blade in Tracey’s hand: the gaping wound that had killed the body beside her.
Her mind made the match as she eased herself silently lower and sideways.
No point trying to kid herself the Morgans had come to the barn at this hour for any reason other than to guard the secret they kept here. And for all its disorder and dark corners, there was no way to remain hidden once they accustomed their eyes to the light and came in to investigate.
‘Wait here.’
Annie heard Tim Morgan set his wife with her deadly blade to block the only exit. Then came the crunch of his footfalls on the concrete floor as he moved towards the back of the barn.
Chapter 20
A thirty-mile stretch of coastline to the east of the once busy ports of Hedon and Hull has see-sawed from solid earth to open sea and back again over the centuries; its last metamorphosis a well-documented reclamation of land a brief 200 years ago, when a small island a mile offshore was embraced into the mainland. Further east and helping to protect this reclaimed salt-marsh, conscious human effort holds tight to the spit of land that is Spurn Point while debates flare and ebb over whether the sea should be allowed to reclaim it, and what it would mean to the industries that rely on the Humber as a navigable passage for shipping; or to the people whose homes stand where the tides used to flow. The clay and silt of Holderness clutches its history in cloying mud, but without the promise of riches to unleash or the resource to explore, it gives up its treasures unpredictably, and often to unwilling recipients.
Annie sat at the stout wooden table in the Morgans’ kitchen, her hands wrapped round a steaming cup of tea. She wasn’t fond of tea, but Tracey had insisted.
‘It’ll warm you. You’ve had a shock.’
It was true; she shivered more than the chill of the night air warranted. But then she’d shocked them too. Her dark, balaclavaed form coming at them like an apparition from next to their guilty secret.
She’d moved so quickly, it had been the Morgans who had stepped back alarmed.
The gun had stayed over Tim Morgan’s arm as though he’d forgotten it was there. Annie knew the rules. If you saw the end of the barrel, you gave in, at once and unconditionally. But if you could get in close before the gun was raised, take your opponent by surprise, get the gun out of the picture long enough to get away…
In the fraction of a second it had taken to pull herself out of the horror of the secret laid bare beside her, she had planned the whole move in her head. A rush over the top of the canvas mound covering the old engine. It was solid enough to take her weight. Jump down on him sideways, spinning him round, putting his body between her and Tracey, flinging the gun back into the cobwebby depths if she could wrench it free, tipping him off-balance, and in the same movement, diving past them and out of the door, sprinting for safety.
It was Tracey who stopped her.
‘No!’ the woman had shrieked. ‘It’s not what you think!’
And Tim had jumped back, surrendering to her before she was on him, never making a move to raise the gun.
They’d all stopped, a frozen tableau by the door, Annie aware only that she was in the most vulnerable position she could be, yet all that eddied around the barn with the inrush of night air, was fear. Her own and theirs. No menace.
For a moment, they’d stared at Annie as she swung her gaze from one to the other of them.
Then Tim leant towards her, eyes screwed up to make out her features under the woollen mask. ‘My God, it’s you,’ he’d gasped.
They sat in the big kitchen, drinking tea. Sleeping dogs flopped in a variety of wicker baskets, or draped themselves over a motheaten settee. Even the small yappy ones had done no more than dart in Annie’s direction in a token gesture before returning to their cushions.
Between them, Tim and Tracey told Annie how they’d had to rush to organize the big wedding their daughter had sprung on them. Family connections provided the marquee, and to keep the cost down, they levelled the ground themselves. It was whilst digging into the side of a slope that they’d unearthed the skeleton.
‘I thought I’d hit a stone,’ Tracey said, with a shudder. ‘I was trying to pull it out by hand when I realized what it was.’
Annie nodded. The shock of finding herself handling human remains was fresh in her mind. She’d been right about the wound to the skull. It was recent and inflicted by Tracey’s spade.
‘Imagine what would have happened if we’d reported it,’ Tim said. ‘We could see it was old, hundreds of years old. We know we should have called the police out and not moved it. We talked it over. We couldn’t delay the wedding and the cost of holding it somewhere else at short notice … we looked into it, but you wouldn’t believe how much it would be.’
Annie knew she shouldn’t condone what they’d done, but it was hard not to sympathize.
‘But why didn’t you cover it over again and leave it till afterwards?’
‘We thought of that.’ They both nodded vigorously, and told her how they’d explained to Tracey’s brother-in-law that they would foreshorten the marquee, and leave the slope untouched.
‘That made it worse,’ Tracey said. ‘He wouldn’t listen. He said he’d send a couple of guys to dig it out for us. He thought we couldn’t manage, said he wouldn’t charge us. They were going to come round the next morning.’
‘We had no choice then,’ Tim put in. ‘We went out that night. We dug it all out, the whole way, further than we needed, but we had to be sure there wouldn’t be any more of them. We were knackered, weren’t we, Trace? We hid it away in that shed.’
And that was the night Ron and Sheryl Long had chosen to watch the farm. Everything Sheryl said she’d seen was true. The Morgans with the wheelbarrow … the body in the shed. She hadn’t mentioned the Longs to the Morgans, but said now, ‘Have you always kept the gate chained at night and that barn locked?’
‘No,
never before. We didn’t even think to lock it that first night. But then we thought, better safe than sorry.’
So that one night when the secret lay freshly wrapped, there had been no locked gates for Sheryl to negotiate. Annie reflected on the effects of bad timing, bad luck … of not looking after the details.
‘We never thought for a moment it was recent,’ Tim said. ‘You believe us, don’t you? If we’d been in any doubt, we’d not have hesitated. No one’s touched that land in centuries. It’s a wonder it wasn’t washed away over the years.’
‘Maybe it was,’ Annie said. ‘Maybe it never started here. With all the shifting currents, who knows? I guess the archaeologists will date it eventually.’
‘Will we have to go to the police now?’
Annie looked at Tracey, then at Tim. After she’d heard the story, she’d asked to go back for a proper look. For once, she could have used Barbara, who had studied archaeology, though Annie wasn’t sure whether or not that qualified her to put an age to a skeleton. Certainly to her untutored eye it looked ancient.
The only marks that looked recent, other than the gash to the skull, were teeth marks at the top end of one of the arm bones. Annie asked the question and saw Tim look shamefaced.
‘We didn’t cover it over well enough that first afternoon. We came back in here for a cuppa to get our heads straight while we talked about it, and when we went out again, one of the dogs had got that bit free.’