He thrust aside these thoughts and instead studied the lakeside area. Even with the memory of death hanging over it, it was still beautiful. He cast his gaze across the surface, wondering where the murder weapon might have entered the water, if it had. The police divers hadn’t found it, but it hadn’t been an easy place to search. He could see where the rushes had been beaten down and the shrubs had clearly been disturbed. And they were being disturbed now. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a distinct movement in the leaves. A bird, he thought, nesting in there. But then the leaves moved again and he caught a glimpse of some solid object. Not a bird but a person. While he had been looking at the lake, he himself had been watched. It hadn’t been his imagination.
Markby began to stroll idly along the water’s edge until he reached the bushes. Then he stopped and called out loudly and firmly, ‘I’m a police officer. Come out at once.’
The bushes remained in place. It wasn’t possible to hear another person holding his breath but Markby was distinctly aware that, in among the foliage, someone was doing just that.
‘Don’t be stupid,’ he said wearily. ‘I’m not going away. Either you come out or I come in and get you, it’s your choice.’
At this there was an upheaval in the greenery, which parted; a slim dishevelled figure pushed his way out and stood before Markby, looking defiant and frightened in equal part.
‘Darren Stebbings,’ said Markby, ‘if I remember rightly. What were you doing in there?’
‘I didn’t know who you were,’ mumbled Darren. ‘So I hid.’ He was an unprepossessing youth, puny of build and fighting a losing battle with teenage acne. His features were small, his nose snub and lips thin. His ears, on the other hand, appeared a little too large. Odd fragments of leaf and twig drifted from about his person as he spoke and added to his elf-like appearance. He didn’t strike Markby as particularly intelligent, either, and he was a rotten liar.
‘You know who I am,’ he said. ‘You’ve seen me before, down here by the lake, the morning Fiona Jenner’s body was found.You were holding a sack with that goose in it, the one that used to patrol down here.’
‘I forgot what you looked like,’ muttered Darren, scuffing his trainer shoe in the already disturbed earth.‘I forgot you were a copper. You might’ve been the murderer. I didn’t know. I was scared.’
‘Come off it, Darren. You knew perfectly well who I was and you were hiding for some other reason. What is it?’
Darren didn’t reply. He fixed his gaze on the ground and stood before Markby in a hangdog attitude. Markby had met the type before. The boy didn’t have the courage to own up but, perversely, his very fear gave him the strength to remain silent in the face of repeated questioning. He could ask Darren what he’d been up to over there until he was blue in the face. Darren wouldn’t tell him. He’d have to find out.
Markby walked over to the bushes and pushed his way in. The spot where Darren had been secreted was easily identifiable by broken twigs. Markby parted the foliage and peered into it. Ah, there it was! He reached out and gently removed the little digital camera which Darren had thrust into the bush before emerging in response to Markby’s demand.
He came back to Darren, the camera held up in his hand. ‘What were you doing, come on, Darren. You were taking photographs? What of? The lake? Of me?’
‘Of you,’ Darren muttered sulkily.
‘Why?’
‘Practice,’ said Darren.
Markby thought this over. What was it Fiona had said? Darren wanted to become a snapper of the stars? ‘You were practising creeping up unobserved on your target and taking a photograph?’
‘That’s it,’ said Darren. ‘I’m going to make it my career. Photograph famous people when they’re not looking and sell the pictures to the papers.’
Oh, yes, thought Markby grimly. I’ve definitely met your type! A little older than you are now and a great deal grubbier, hanging round like a vulture outside a courthouse, pushing your camera in front of the faces of the grief-stricken, not even the dying escaping the lens.
‘Right,’ he said. ‘Now then, you tell me about other occasions you’ve done this, crept up on people.’
Darren looked even more sullen. ‘I haven’t done it often. I haven’t had much chance. I took some pictures of Mrs Jenner when she was out walking the dog.’
‘And what about Fiona Jenner, a young, beautiful girl? Don’t tell me you didn’t take any snaps of her.’
‘I took some,’ Darren admitted. ‘But my dad tore them up. He took the memory card out of the camera as well. He doesn’t understand.’
‘But I do, Darren, believe you me. Tell me about the pictures of Fiona Jenner.’
‘They weren’t mucky!’ said Darren suddenly with unexpected vigour. He looked up, his pinched features flushed. ‘I didn’t go creeping round looking in windows or anything like that. The ones Dad destroyed, they were taken down by the paddock when she was with the horses. She liked the horses.They’re Mrs Jenner’s horses but Fiona always rode them when she was here. I took some last summer, too, when she was in the swimming pool round the back of the house. They weren’t bad but the ones with the horses were better and my dad just tore them up!’ Resentment burned in Darren’s voice.
‘Hm, I think I’ll have a word with your father. Where is he now?’
Darren looked nervous. ‘You’re going to tell him I was taking a picture of you?’
‘I might. It depends. Where could I find him?’
‘He’s down at the copse,’ said Darren reluctantly. He turned and pointed towards some trees about a quarter of a mile away. Markby could just make out a thin curl of smoke rising into the clear air. ‘He’s clearing it out. Here, you don’t want me to go down there with you?’
‘No,’ said Markby to the boy’s obvious relief. The relief was short-lived. Markby’s next action was to slip the camera into his pocket.
‘Oy!’ yelped Darren. ‘What are you doing? That’s my property! You can’t do that.’
‘I can. I’m confiscating it. I have reason to believe you have been taking unauthorized pictures of a police investigation. Now clear off home.’
For a moment he thought Darren was going to throw himself at him and attempt to wrest the camera from him by force. Then his face crumpled and he looked more as if he was going to cry. ‘I paid a lot of money for that,’ he snivelled.
‘I dare say you did. Don’t worry, you’ll get it back when all this is over.’
Markby walked away leaving Darren glowering after him. About halfway to the trees he stopped and took out the camera to check on the youth’s photographic progress. There was quite a good picture of Markby gazing across the water like one of Arthur’s knights waiting for a lily-white arm to appear from the depths. There were also two good ones of police activity around the lake’s edge. Here was Jess Campbell, looking straight into the lens but completely unaware of it.
Markby let out a hiss of annoyance, thrust the camera back into his pocket and strode on towards the trees.
As he got nearer the copse he could smell the burning wood and hear the crackle of the flames. Showers of golden sparks flew up into the air. Mixed with the odour of dry debris being consumed by the flames was the more unpleasant one of damp or decaying matter. He could see the gaunt figure of Stebbings nearby. The man had taken off his jacket and rolled up his sleeves above his sinewy forearms. In his hand he held a sickle and was stooping to slash at undergrowth.He presented a strange, medieval figure such as might have been found in the margins of some illustrated Book of Hours. There was a dirt track running along the edge of the copse back towards the main drive up to the house. A ramshackle and ancient Land Rover was parked on it. It had clearly been kept out of doors in all weathers because moss was growing round the window frames.
The wood was a tangle of native trees. Beneath them, stretching into the shadows, Markby could see patches of bluebells and a carpet of white wood anemone. Peeping out here and there were the yellow faces o
f a few late primroses and celandine.
The woodland edge where Stebbings was busy was a tangle of dead and live brambles, seedling trees, woody nightshade, nettles, dock and grasses. The man worked methodically, the sickle swinging back and forth, reducing rampant nature to uneven stubble. As he worked the fire behind him consumed a pile of branches and dead wood as if in a mock auto-da-fé.
‘Good morning!’ called out Markby, as soon as he got near enough. He checked his wristwatch. ‘I see it’s not quite noon. Your son told me you were down here.’
Stebbings moved away from the edge of the wood and studied Markby from beneath his bushy eyebrows. The sickle dangled at the end of one long arm by his side. He didn’t look friendly. ‘What do you want me for, then? Your sergeant came and looked at my old Land Rover.’
‘Nothing to do with that. Your son’s interested in photography.’
Stebbings scowled and rubbed the grimy fingers of his free hand across his beard. ‘He is. Waste of time, I keep telling him. What’s it to you if he is?’
‘I understand he took some photographs of Fiona Jenner which you destroyed.’
Stebbings looked surprised and then angry. His fingers tightened on the handle of the sickle. ‘The stupid kid’s not told you that?’
‘Very wisely he owned up. Unwisely, you destroyed them. He says you tore them up. What did you do with the memory card?’
‘I burned the lot,’ Stebbings told him. ‘I burned the bits of the photos and I burned the little card thing. It wasn’t anything much, just pictures of the young lady petting the horses. But things having turned out the way they have, I thought it best you lot didn’t know about them. So I got rid of them. I told Darren to say nothing.’
‘I understand you wanted to protect your son,’ Markby told him. ‘But in the absence of the photographs I have only your word and his as to what they showed. I have confiscated his camera, by the way, as a matter of prudence, until this is over.’
‘I should have taken it away from him,’ growled Darren’s father. ‘I should have taken it away from him the day he brought the damn thing home. Pleased as punch he was with it. I told him it was a powerful lot of money for a dinky little gadget like a kid’s toy. He reckons he can make a living at it one day. You reckon he can?’ Stebbings posed this question unexpectedly.
Markby raised his eyebrows at being thrust into the position of careers adviser. ‘I am afraid that your son has a definite talent. I don’t doubt he will successfully misuse it one day.’
‘Ah,’ said Stebbings. ‘Very likely the little bugger will, then, if you say so.’
The bonfire crackled and spat a few sparks.
‘It’s a lot of work for one man,’ said Markby, nodding towards it.
‘It is. All that stuff burning there is what I cleared in January when the winter storms brought down a couple of trees. But I didn’t have the time to burn it before now. Too wet, anyway. Then Mr Jenner, he came down here and saw that the grass and brambles had spilled on to the path. He told me to cut it back. I told him, better to leave it until later. Birds might be nesting in some of it. Not that I’ve found any nests. Mr Jenner said he didn’t give a damn about birds’ nests, get it cleared. So I looked for Darren this morning to come down and give me a hand but he’s skived off somewhere.’ Stebbings gazed discontentedly at his work.
Markby nodded and then suddenly uttered an exclamation. He grabbed a long branch from the heap Stebbings had piled up ready to add to the flames, and thrust it into the bonfire. Watched by the astonished gardener, he pulled if out and held it towards the man. ‘And what’s this?’
‘I dunno,’ said Stebbings, peering at the end of the branch. ‘What is it?’
‘I’ll tell you what I think it is,’ Markby told him. ‘I think it’s Fiona Jenner’s red hair band which she was seen wearing when she left the house on the day she died, but wasn’t wearing when next seen by her family, dead by the lake. Perhaps you’d like to tell me why you’re burning it?’
When Markby got to Regional HQ, with the red scrunchy in a plastic bag, he was waylaid by Ginny Holding with the news that Inspector Campbell was on the phone.
‘I’ll speak to her,’ he said. ‘Put her through to my desk.’
‘Hello, sir,’ came Jess’s voice down the line. ‘I’m calling in to say I’m making my way home. I had a couple of surprises at the flat. Mr Smythe was there when I arrived.’
‘I’ve just come back from Overvale House. Jenner told me he’d sent Toby there. Had he done any damage?’
‘He’d only just got there, I think. He apologized. Then we were both interrupted by the arrival of someone called Tara Seale who lives there with Fiona Jenner. Her partner, if you see what I mean, sir.’
‘Ah, yes. Jenner told me about that, too. That is to say, he wasn’t a hundred per cent certain of the situation but he had guessed Fiona hadn’t told him something. Unfortunately, he hadn’t forewarned Smythe, let alone you.’
‘No, sir,’ said Jess tetchily. Jeremy Jenner clearly wasn’t her favourite person at the moment. She was also doubtless annoyed that both her pieces of information had failed to surprise the superintendent. ‘I felt a bit of a fool but not as much as Mr Smythe did.’ There was some satisfaction in Campbell’s voice as she said this. ‘I waved my ID at Tara Seale and got him out of there sharpish. Seale didn’t know Fiona was dead. I’m sure about that. She wasn’t acting.’
‘Where’s Smythe now?’ Markby asked her.
‘I don’t know for sure, sir. He said he was going for a walk along by the Festival Hall. I think he’s probably gone somewhere to drown his sorrows.’
‘Well,’ Markby said,‘things are certainly happening on all fronts. Fiona’s red hair scrunchy has turned up.’
‘Where?’ He had to smile at her startled tone.
‘Near a copse on Jenner’s land. I was just in time to stop Stebbings burning it on his bonfire. We’ll have to get a team down searching the wood. Oh, and his son had been snapping the police at work by the lake. He took a good picture of you.’
‘what?’
Markby chuckled and put down the phone.
Chapter Nine
‘What did Stebbings say?’ asked Meredith, moving her head on Markby’s shoulder so that she could look up at him.
‘He said he hadn’t noticed it. He’d been clearing out the undergrowth by the edge of the wood. It might have been in that, or it might have been on the ground where he built his fire. Or perhaps somewhere between the edge of the copse and the place where the bonfire was. It could have been caught up in branches as he dragged across the stuff to burn. After a long and, I might say, quite lively discussion about this, he decided it had probably been lying on the track which runs by the wood and got caught up in the rubbish as he dragged it across.’
They were reclining on the old sofa in Meredith’s living room before a blank television screen. When Meredith and I move into our house together, Markby thought, the television is going into some sort of cabinet with doors, so it can be shut away. Why should the thing dominate the room even when no one is watching anything? It’s like being always under the eye of a petulant elderly relative, demanding attention, emanating waves of reproach at being ignored.
Having arranged for the scrunchy to be sent for forensic examination and for a team to start combing the woods, Markby had informed everyone that he was now going out for a very late lunch. But as soon as he’d got in the car, he’d made up his mind to skip lunch and drop by Meredith’s place instead. Jeremy Jenner, Toby Smythe, Jess Campbell, Harry Stebbings and young Darren, they all besieged his mind. He needed to distance himself from them for an hour or so. He wanted to get what they’d had to say into some kind of perspective. Perhaps talking to Meredith would help.
‘You believe him, then? That he wasn’t burning it on purpose?’ Her voice, by his ear, sounded incredulous.
Well she might find the whole thing hard to believe. Markby shrugged, which was injudicious because it jolted her
head. ‘Sorry,’ he said and bent his head to kiss the top of hers. ‘I have no reason to disbelieve him.’
He sensed scepticism emanating from her and sighed. ‘Look, if he’d wanted to destroy it, he’d have made a point of doing so before now and not kept it only to chuck it on a fire with a lot of other stuff. That’s what he did with the photographs. He destroyed them at once. It’s still a very important discovery. We’ve now seriously to consider that Fiona died there on that track. There were already indications she hadn’t died at the lakeside. We’ve got people searching the woods now. They’re looking for Fiona’s mobile phone, among other things. If they find that we’d be pretty sure that is where she was attacked. So far, no luck. Stebbings swears he’s found no mobile down there. He showed me his own battered old model, as if to prove he hadn’t nicked Fiona’s. He’s a strange man. I fancy he chooses to work and live out in the country like that, on his own, because basically he doesn’t like being with people. Being a loner doesn’t make you a crook and I don’t think Stebbings is of a criminal mind.’
But what is a criminal mind? he asked himself. When does being uncooperative, or thoughtless, or just plain stupid, turn into wilful obstruction? Stebbings didn’t want the police at Overvale any more than his employer wanted them there. Jenner reluctantly accepted them because he wanted something from them: the identity of his daughter’s killer and that of the writer of abusive letters to his wife. Stebbings, on the other hand, saw Fiona’s death as no reason to welcome the police. They remained strangers on his patch, snoopers into private matters. Did most people see them like that?
Meredith’s voice recalled him to his surroundings.
‘So she died in or near the woods? It makes sense. Her killer wouldn’t attack her out in the open where someone might see.’
‘Yet look at the risk he took taking the body to the lake and spending time arranging it in the water.’ It wasn’t right. The actions contradicted one another. What kind of killer behaved so erratically? Or had he changed his mind? What had caused the change? Was there, after all, some macabre purpose in arranging the body as it had been found? Or was it found exactly so? Who found it? Stebbings. And Stebbings, by his own admission, had moved it, pulling Fiona from the water and attempting resuscitation.
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