Palmer-Jones 04 - A Prey to Murder

by Ann Cleeves

  With boy scout resourcefulness he had procured sleeping bags, a Thermos flask and sandwiches. He had brought a powerful torch and when finally they arrived at the field centre he shone it towards the sleeping warden. The young man woke suddenly and quietly but sat still, his knees pulled in front of him, his head leaning back against the wall.

  ‘Sorry,’ he said. He had a flat north-country accent. ‘ I don’t get much sleep this weekend. I was in mid-Wales. We’ve been very worried about red kites this year so we’ve been keeping a watch at the weekends.’

  The Regional Officer had said that the warden’s name was Lewis. George never found out if that was his Christian or his surname. He was a pale, colourless man of indeterminate age, so intense and committed that George could not imagine him living in a real house with a real family. He seemed destined to spend his life sleeping under trees where red kites were nesting, sacrificing his youth to saving the country’s wildlife. Pritchard must have recognized the exaggerated, almost religious, fervour too, because he treated him with a wary and respectful distance, as if he were a fanatical priest whose ideas he did not share.

  Pritchard let them into the building. It had been unused all winter and was damp and cold. There was no electricity and no means of heating the place. A large window looked out on the hill, but by the time they arrived it was dark and starless and there was nothing to see. Pritchard put the sleeping bags on the concrete floor, so they had something soft to sit on, and Lewis described the site where the merlins were breeding.

  ‘You can’t see it from here,’ he said. ‘It’s in a small dip in the hill. There are three hawthorn trees. They’re stunted, but there’s just enough shelter for them to grow. The merlins’ nest is in the left-hand tree, it’s an old crow’s nest and would be a quick and easy climb. Williams’ll have no trouble.’

  ‘How would you expect Williams to get here?’ Pritchard asked.

  ‘By car up the track from the main road if he’s feeling very sure of himself,’ Lewis said. ‘Otherwise he would leave the car in the village as we did, and walk.’

  ‘Wouldn’t he need to get the eggs into an incubator quickly?’

  ‘There’d be no desperate hurry. He’s probably got a portable incubator in his car.’

  The boy was tired and cynical. Nothing the falconers would do could surprize and shock him. It was the older men with their years of experience in the law who seemed naïve and impressionable. Released from their desks they found it challenging to be sitting in the dark, waiting to catch the man who might lead them to Frank Oliver.

  ‘Of course it doesn’t do any good,’ the boy said. ‘All this cops and robbers stuff. That’s why we’ve dropped a lot of our wardening schemes. We’ve found that the wardens only attract attention to the nests.’

  He pulled a blanket around him and went back to sleep. George and Pritchard dozed but could not sleep. The floor was too uncomfortable. They were not used to sleeping under Welsh trees. Outside the wind blew and echoed around the moor.

  George thought of Molly. She would enjoy this, he thought, but perhaps she’s safer at Gorse Hill. He knew Pritchard had been impressed by the information about Stephen Oliver and the passport, but George, himself, had not been surprized. He knew that Molly, could magically persuade people to talk to her. He believed her capable of anything.

  They saw the beam of Williams’ car headlights before they heard the engine. The rumble of the car might have been the wind. Lewis was suddenly awake. As the light swung into the room through the window, the older men could see his eyes wide open, his head erect and alert. No one moved. The car stopped and the lights were switched off.

  ‘He’ll have to wait until there’s a bit more light,’ Lewis whispered. Inside the building there was no indication of dawn. Strangely broken by the gusts of wind, they could hear the rhythm of a voice speaking words they could not catch, then a faint line of music. Williams must be listening to his car radio. After about ten minutes the music stopped suddenly and the car door was opened, then slammed shut. There was the sound of footsteps on the road, then silence.

  Pritchard jumped to his feet.

  ‘Not yet!’ Lewis said urgently. ‘We want to do him for theft, not just for wilful disturbance. He has to get to the nest and take the eggs before he sees us.’

  ‘Bugger that,’ Pritchard said angrily. ‘We want to question him about murder. I don’t know what you’re doing here anyway.’

  Outside it was starting to get light. The wind had dropped and there was a persistent drizzle. The visibility was still very poor. The two men stared at each other, each refusing to give way.

  ‘Just a few more minutes, Superintendent,’ George murmured. ‘He’s not going to get away now. His car’s here.’ He turned to Lewis. ‘ If we wait outside,’ he said, ‘ will Williams be able to see us from the nest site?’

  The warden shook his head. ‘I told you,’ he said. ‘There’s a dip in the hill.’

  They stood outside on the concrete track. Lewis pointed in the direction of the merlins’ nest, but they could see nothing through the blanket of low cloud. Pritchard stood, peering through the greyness, waiting for Williams to return. The weather was worrying the warden and he said-suddenly: ‘We’ll go now. The eggs shouldn’t be out of the nest in this. It’s too cold. Better to do Williams for wilful disturbance than for the birds not to hatch.’

  He led them off the road into the sodden grass. They climbed a drystone wall. Occasionally a sheep loomed out of the mist in front of them.

  Then, so shocking that it might have been the sound of a gunshot, another car door slammed. They turned to see the shadow of a man running from the passenger side of Williams’ expensive car down the concrete track towards the main road.

  Pritchard was nearest to the track and had the best view of the man. ‘Christ!’ he shouted. ‘It’s Oliver. He was in the bloody car all the time.’ He began to chase back towards the track and scrambled over the wall, swearing as he put his foot in a boggy puddle. The mud soaked his trousers and slowed him down. George knew that he would be no help. He was too old for that kind of run. He looked at Lewis. He was young and fit and would have had more chance of catching Oliver than Pritchard had. But he was concerned about his birds now. Oliver was none of his business and he had wanted to catch Williams for a long time. He walked on steadily up the hill towards the hawthorn trees.

  ‘You stay by the car,’ he said to George. ‘If I frighten Williams he’ll come back here. He won’t go far. He’s not daft. He won’t go off on the moor on a day like this.’

  George realized that what the boy said made sense and walked back towards the car, feeling that his age made him helpless and useless. There was nothing for him to do but wait. He supposed that the man in the car had been Oliver, but his eyesight was not as good as Pritchard’s and he had seen only a blurred shape. This further illustration of his weakness irritated him more than his slowness. He would have liked to see the man they were chasing. Pritchard and Oliver had already disappeared into the low cloud at the end of the track, but it seemed to George in his mood of depression that Pritchard was unlikely to catch the man. Oliver was desperate, and though he was younger Pritchard was unfit and overweight.

  The whole incident had become a farce. He supposed that Pritchard would arrange for roadblocks and extra police help, but that would take time. It had never occurred to them that Oliver might be accompanying Williams. It seemed easy in retrospect to feel foolish because they had not looked in the car before setting out on the hill, but Williams had been the target. They had not even any concrete proof that Oliver and Williams were acquaintances. George stood miserably by the car, while the rain dripped off the bottom of his Barbour jacket on to his trousers and into his boots.

  Lewis and Williams returned to the car first. Lewis was furious.

  ‘He’s got rid of the eggs,’ he said to George. ‘ I was too late. He’d been in the nest before I got there, but he must have heard me coming and dumped the eggs.�
�� He turned to Williams. ‘What did you do with them?’ he demanded, his anger at last giving his face some colour. ‘If I can find them now I might save them.’

  The man shrugged and smiled. He did not look towards his car, did not mention that he’d had a passenger. ‘ I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ he said. ‘I don’t know anything about eggs.’

  George learned later that Williams had been the only son of a gamekeeper who worked on a big estate in southern Shropshire. He had been confused by his parents’ conflicting attitudes to their employers. His mother had wanted her son to be like them, well-spoken, educated, cultured, but Theo had failed the 11-plus and her dreams of university and an academic career had come to nothing. His father had railed against the injustice of working for a man who knew next to nothing about his land, but pretended to know so much. He was an angry socialist who tried to explain to his son that there were only two classes in the country – the exploiters and the exploited, but made it clear that he despised the landowner for his unmasculine ways. He would not have wished to change places with him. So Williams had inherited envy and a bitterness at being excluded from his father and a softness and neshness from his mother. Occasionally his voice had an aggressive local accent. He wanted to belong to the area, but had travelled a lot and seemed to belong nowhere. Now he turned towards Lewis. ‘If you’ve lost merlins’ eggs, it’s probably because of some natural predator,’ he said. ‘ You’re paranoid. Of course I’ve always said RSPB wardens cause a lot of birds to fail. They get too close to the nests and disturb the raptors.’

  Lewis looked as though he would hit the man, but turned away.

  ‘I’m going to look for those eggs,’ he said to George. ‘Don’t wait for me. I’ll make my own way back to Farthingford.’

  As it got lighter the mist and low cloud seemed to lift a little, though the rain was just as heavy. George could see to the end of the track now, to the main road. A mail van drove past then disappeared into the cloud further up the ridge. George did not know what to do. If Williams decided that he wanted to drive away there was little he could do to stop him. He had no real official status. Williams, however, showed no immediate inclination to leave. Perhaps he wanted to know what they were doing there and how Oliver had come to disappear.

  ‘Your friend ran away,’ George said. He had grown tired of his role of passive, aged observer. He wanted to make something happen.

  ‘What friend?’ Williams said. He was a dark-haired, well-built man, dressed immaculately as if for the grouse moor.

  ‘It was a foolish thing to do,’ George continued. ‘The police will catch him eventually.’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ Williams said uneasily. ‘There was no one else in the car.’ He thrust his hands in his pockets and stamped his feet up and down on the road as if he were cold. Unnerved, he restored to belligerence. ‘Who are you anyway?’

  The lie encouraged George. If Williams had had a legitimate passenger he would have said so. At least Pritchard had not disappeared on a fruitless chase. He felt strenthened by Williams’ anxiety.

  ‘My name’s Palmer-Jones,’ George said formally. ‘I’m a Wildlife Act Inspector. I have reason to believe that in your car you have implements to assist you in the illegal removal of schedule one birds from the wild. I’d like to inspect the contents of your car.’

  Williams looked at him in disbelief.

  ‘My God,’ he said. ‘You sound like the bloody police. I don’t suppose you’ve got a warrant?’

  George was about to say that under the Wildlife and Countryside Act he did not need a warrant if he had sufficient evidence that a crime had been committed, but never found out if Williams would have believed the bluff. Pritchard appeared out of the mist at the end of the track, his raincoat flapping around his knees. He looked angry and exhausted. As he approached up the track George could see splashes of mud on his face and a graze across his forehead.

  ‘I lost him,’ he said. ‘ He must have left the road somewhere and gone back on to the moor.’ He looked at Williams with disgust. ‘You’re in deep trouble,’ he said. ‘Give your car keys to Mr Palmer-Jones and get in the back with me. We’re going to the nearest police station.’

  ‘He can’t drive my car,’ Williams said, his voice for the first time showing real emotion.

  Pritchard said nothing. He took the keys from the man’s pocket and threw them to George.

  Williams sat calmly in an interview room, while Pritchard raised the sleepy, red-bricked police station to frenzy. He had walked in as if he owned the place, filling the space with his ringing tones, shouting for tea, a change of clothes, an interview room. The policemen there were already bemused by his radio call. Who was this mad Welshman from the south who arrested respectable local businessmen and caused chaos in the district with his demands for roadblocks and extra men?

  ‘You can’t arrest him!’ the station sergeant had said. ‘Most of the police committee go to his evening classes. He takes them out for walks on the hills.’

  ‘He had a suspected murderer in his car.’

  ‘Are you sure, sir?’ The station sergeant was sceptical. ‘Could you really see in that light? It might have been anyone.’

  ‘It was Oliver!’ Pritchard boomed, but even George could sense the trace of uncertainty in his voice. George stood quietly, a little embarrassed by Pritchard’s loudness, embarrassed because he should not be there at all. He was superfluous now. This was a murder investigation and Pritchard would want to interview Williams with one of his colleagues. But Pritchard seemed determined to ignore all propriety. Perhaps he even wanted to provoke the duty sergeant to further disapproval.

  ‘This is Mr Palmer-Jones,’ he said. ‘He’s a Wildlife Act Inspector. I don’t understand about these bloody birds so he’s sitting in on the interview in case I need him. Can you arrange for some tea? And find out all there is to know about Williams.’

  Pritchard and George stood for a moment in the corridor and watched Williams through the interview room door. It seemed to George that he seemed surprisingly at home there.

  ‘Has he got a record?’ he asked.

  ‘As long as your arm,’ Pritchard said. ‘But all spent convictions and mostly as a juvenile. He came from a very respectable family and they threw him out when he first got into trouble. That was in the early sixties and work was easy to find. He moved around a lot, mixed with a lot of nasty customers, usually got caught. Then he came back like the prodigal son and hasn’t been in trouble since. Apparently they think a lot of him in the district.’

  ‘He’s not been involved with the police at all?’

  Pritchard shook his head. ‘He’s not even had a parking ticket for his precious car,’ he said. ‘ He’s done a lot of charitable work in Puddleworth and the surrounding area. He’s never hidden his record, in fact he’s made quite a feature of it in the publicity. You know the sort of thing – he reformed and became successful, so with a bit of help so could all the other bad lads in the town.’

  ‘Do you think he’s reformed?’ George asked.

  ‘Perhaps,’ Pritchard said. ‘ Or perhaps he just got clever and changed his field of operation.’

  They went in. Theo Williams was sitting upright on the plastic chair with his palms flat on the table before him. The cuffs of his jacket had slipped back over his wrists, so they could see the gold watch and gold cuff links. He might have been born in the country, George thought, but there was something of the city wise boy about him. He was about forty, round-faced, fleshy. He took great care of himself.

  Pritchard sat on the other side of the table from the man. George took the seat in a corner where a constable had been sitting before they came into the room.

  ‘Now,’ Pritchard said. ‘Tell me about Frank Oliver.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Superintendent,’ Williams said. ‘I’m afraid there must be some mistake. I haven’t seen Frank Oliver for weeks.’ In his time alone in the interview room he had composed hims
elf and decided to be polite. It was clever, George thought, to admit to knowing Oliver.

  ‘Who was in your car this morning, Mr Williams?’

  ‘I don’t know, Superintendent. Really, I don’t know.’ He gave a little gesture of helplessness as if to show that he was devastated that he could not supply Pritchard with more information. ‘I picked up a hitch hiker on the way from Puddleworth. I was going to take him all the way to Shrewsbury. Perhaps he got fed up while I went for a walk.’

  ‘You told Mr Palmer-Jones there was no one in the car.’

  Williams smiled and showed the gold in his teeth.

  ‘I don’t like officials,’ he said. ‘I think they should mind their own business. It was an instinctive reaction to lie.’

  ‘Do you usually walk on the hill in this weather so early in the morning?’

  ‘I’m interested in birds of prey, Mr Pritchard,’ Williams said. ‘I’ve been studying merlins in this area for many years.’

  He smiled again.

  ‘How well do you know Oliver?’ Pritchard asked. ‘He’s a falconer,’ Williams said. ‘A very good falconer.’ He flexed his fingers. He had long, woman’s hands. ‘ I work quite closely with falconers. I prepare skins of birds of prey for exhibition. We met through Mr Fenn at the Puddleworth Centre.’

  ‘Tell me about your interest in taxidermy,’ said Pritchard. ‘ How did that begin?’

  ‘My father was a gamekeeper,’ Williams said. ‘ I grew up learning about wildlife and the countryside. Then when I was at borstal we had a talk from a local taxidermist. I was hooked. When I got out I was taken on as an apprentice at a big place in north London. I started off scraping elephants’ trunks and preparing rhino feet umbrella stands, but I loved it. Eventually I had my own workshop in the craft centre at Puddleworth. I can tell you, Superintendent, that without my interest I might be a hardened criminal by now.’