Strawfoot

by David Hodges

  He grabbed the chair arm and tried to haul himself to his feet with the aid of his stick as she grabbed her coat from the back of her own chair and threw open the front door. ‘Kate!’ he yelled. ‘Where on earth are you going?’

  But she didn’t stop to explain and by the time he’d managed to hobble to the front door, she was already in her car with the engine roaring. ‘Hayd, I’ve got to check something out,’ she shouted at him through the open window. ‘Trust me.’

  ‘So let me ring the control room?’ he shouted back. ‘Don’t do anything on your own.’

  ‘Don’t ring anyone, Hayd,’ she responded, reversing at speed out into the road. ‘With Ansell on my back, this is my best chance to score.’

  Then she was gone with a coughing snarl of the powerful engine, her tail lights snuffed out in the gloom like twin candle flames.

  Roscoe looked up quickly from the pile of documents he was studying and glared at the civilian incident room operator who had materialized in front of his desk. ‘What?’ he said brusquely.

  Tom Green was accustomed to the DI’s grumpy personality and took a deep breath. ‘I got that telephone subscriber information DS Lewis wanted, sir,’ he said. ‘Took a lot longer than I had expected. Trouble is, I can’t raise her now – she’s got one of our all-singing, all-dancing TETRA radios with her but she’s just not answering.’

  ‘What do you mean not answering? Didn’t you leave a message?’

  The civvy swallowed nervously as if he was being adjudged personally responsible for the situation. ‘Yes, sir but you – you asked me to keep you informed.’

  Roscoe grunted again. ‘So keep trying,’ he said. ‘She’s probably in a bad reception area. You know what it’s like down here.’ Returning to the pile of documents in front of him, he added, ‘Shut the door on your way out, will you?’

  The mist closed around Kate like a shroud as she negotiated her way through the network of narrow lanes and she had to use all her self-control to keep her foot off the accelerator and avoid spinning from the wet tarmac into one of the treacherous rhynes. Fuzzy lights appeared periodically and faded with a swish of tyres and once a deer bounded across the road in front of her, forcing her to brake hard.

  But then her destination emerged from the smoky rain-washed gloom and she slowed to a crawl, looking for the house she was seeking. It appeared suddenly but she made no effort to pull up in the driveway. Instead, she drove on a few yards until she found a layby and pulled off the road, close to a wall.

  She switched off and sat there for a second, listening to the rattle of the rain on the hard-top. Then, throwing open her door, she stepped out on to the road and locked the car behind her, shivering as a penetrating drizzle greeted her through the mist.

  A huge articulated lorry trundled past as she approached the driveway of the house and she watched its glistening coffin-like trailer vanish almost as it appeared. She sniffed. It would be weather like this, wouldn’t it? Bloody mist and rain; it was a curse of the Levels. Still, at least she could make her approach to the house without being seen and no one was likely to be out in the garden now anyway.

  She was conscious of the fact that she could be totally wrong about things and knew she couldn’t afford to make any more stupid mistakes with Ansell seemingly already out for her scalp. But equally, she couldn’t afford to ignore what appeared to be irrefutable evidence pointing to the identity of the killer. If she was right and could prove it, she would be the heroine of the day; if she turned out to be wrong and messed up, she would be looking for a new career!

  There were no lights on in the house, despite the gloom, and, as she got closer to the front door, skirting a familiar parked car en route, she could see no sign of life inside either. Her feet crunched on gravel as she made her way cautiously down the side of the place, heading for the garage, and she froze for a second, wincing at the sound and expecting a door to open somewhere and a voice to challenge her. But the silence remained unbroken, save for the swish of vehicles on the wet road. The garage doors were firmly shut but, following the outer wall, she found a side door and tried the handle. Unlocked. Brilliant!

  Turning the handle slowly and holding her breath in case it squeaked, she eased the door open. The handle made hardly any sound but the door stuck, then jerked open with an obtrusive scraping sound. She waited a second, tensing for the shout that meant discovery but incredibly, nothing happened.

  She smelled oil as she stepped through the doorway and produced a torch from her pocket, snapping it on and training it on the long low car that was parked there under an all-encompassing tarpaulin. Her heart racing, she gritted her teeth and reached down to haul the tarpaulin off the front of the vehicle – then stared, with a sense of shock and exultation, at the sloping bonnet of a sleek red Austin Healey 3000 sports car. Bingo! She had scored.

  She was so wrapped up in her crucial discovery that she didn’t hear the scrape of the shoes on the concrete floor at the other end of the garage and her first indication that she was not alone came with the sudden devastating blaze of the garage light.

  The tall muscular man was standing by the internal door to the house, staring at her, one hand in his trouser pocket and the other gripping the door frame almost casually. ‘And what the hell do you think you are doing in here, Sergeant?’ Neville Haslar said quietly. ‘Researching classic cars?’

  CHAPTER 23

  ‘Criminal offence, breaking and entering, isn’t it?’ Neville Haslar went on before Kate could say anything. ‘Bit of a bad example for a detective sergeant to set, don’t you think?’

  His face looked drawn and white and his eyes had the intense haunted look of a man near the edge; small wonder after the terrible news he had received about his wife’s death. Kate felt sick, doubts about the validity of her suspicions now beginning to crowd her mind. What if she was totally off beam? How would it look, not only to her superiors but to the general public as well, if this latest faux pas of hers ever got out? She could already see the headline in the local rag, following her suspension: ‘Police Sergeant Breaks Into Home of Murder Victim.’

  She swallowed several times, then cleared her throat, conscious of the fact that he hadn’t taken his eyes off her. ‘I – I called to speak to you about—’ she began but broke off and came out with a lie instead. ‘I thought I saw someone in the shadows by your garage and felt I should take a look.’

  To her surprise, he raised both hands and gave her a slow clap. ‘Very good, Sergeant,’ he sneered. ‘Now that is quick thinking – load of balls but quick thinking nevertheless.’

  He pushed the internal door behind him wide open and waved a hand towards it. ‘I think we should have a little talk before I ring your superiors, eh?’

  Kate swallowed again, then nodded, feeling stupid and vulnerable. She had made a huge mistake and she was quite sure he was going to make her pay dearly for it. What if he did have a red sports car? So did lots of other people and he had never been given the chance to deny the fact anyway, so it wasn’t as though he had been trying to hide anything. As for all the other strands her mind had put together for her, nothing seemed to stand up to scrutiny any more; it was all conjecture – putting two and two together and making five! Her only chance was to try and persuade him not to pursue a complaint. She tightened her mouth as she stepped past him through the door. Crawl, if needs be, she thought, that’s what she’d have to do, even if the very thought made her want to throw up. After all, what other option did she have?

  ‘Do have a seat,’ he said, showing her to an armchair in a quaint living room with an inglenook fireplace and a low-beamed ceiling, now lit by twin table lamps. ‘Place is seventeenth century,’ he said, noting her apparent curiosity. ‘Left to my wife by her father. Do take your coat off. Er . . . drink?’

  She slipped out of her short coat, hooking it over one of the wings of her chair and threw him a quick sideways glance as he opened a small cabinet and produced a whisky bottle and two tumblers. She shook her h
ead. ‘No, thanks, not while I’m on duty.’

  He gave a humourless smile. ‘Oh but I insist – and we might as well be comfortable while you do your best to try and persuade me not to ring your superintendent.’

  He poured two large measures and placed one tumbler on the arm of her chair. ‘16-year-old malt,’ he explained. ‘So you should feel honoured.’

  Kate cleared her throat again and took a sip of her whisky, more to please him than anything else but also to calm her nerves. ‘I – I can only say how sorry I am for trespassing on your property at this dreadful time,’ she blurted.

  A cold laugh. ‘Now that is a Freudian slip,’ he said, waving his glass at her and leaning casually against the fireplace with his other hand thrust in his pocket. ‘It suggests you are only sorry for breaking in because my wife has been murdered; otherwise, it would have been perfectly OK.’

  She shook her head quickly. ‘No, I didn’t mean—’

  But he silenced her with another wave of his glass. ‘Forget it; I have already.’

  She felt encouraged by his reply. ‘Then I can only say how much I sympathize with your loss.’

  He took a sip of his whisky and inclined his head in polite acknowledgement. ‘Yes, it has come as a terrible shock, I must admit – even though Denise and I have never been very close.’ He saw her look of puzzlement at the comment and sighed. ‘Lived separate lives more or less for at least a couple of years. She had her horses and I—’ He shrugged. ‘I had the historical society and – what is it you called it? Ah yes, twitching – I had my twitching. Does all this surprise you?’

  She shook her head. ‘Relationships can be funny things, Mr Haslar.’

  He nodded his approval. ‘That they can and ours was certainly not the best but now she’s gone, I just wish we had tried a little harder.’

  He drained his glass and promptly refilled it, leaning against the wooden lintel of the fireplace again, with the glass held almost nonchalantly in his right hand, while his left returned to the pocket of his trousers, fiddling with what sounded like a bunch of keys. ‘My type of sedative,’ he explained. ‘Now tell me, why were you so interested in checking my car?’

  She made a face. ‘I told you I thought I saw—’

  He cut her off with an impatient cluck of his tongue. ‘Let’s not go back to that nonsense again, Sergeant. If you were checking for an intruder, why would you peel the tarpaulin back off the bonnet?’ He gave a short laugh. ‘I wouldn’t think there was enough room for someone to hide under there, would you?’

  ‘I was just curious.’

  ‘Aha, curious, were you? Well, it’s a 1960 restored Austin Healey 3000 – my pride and joy. Satisfied now?’

  He was playing with her, Kate could see that but why? What was behind his persistent questioning? Surely he had enough to think about with his wife’s death, without worrying about her interest in his car, unless. . . . And it was then, with a sickening jolt to the stomach, that she was provided with the answer.

  Up until now he had been holding his glass of whisky in his right hand and gesticulating with it, while his left was hidden in the pocket of his trousers, but suddenly he changed hands as he turned to top up his glass yet again, and immediately the realization hit her with the sickening force of a blow to the stomach. Neville Haslar had already admitted that he and his wife had not been very close and ordinarily that could have explained why he was not wearing a wedding ring but there was almost certainly a more physical reason for the lack of the customary gold band – the finger on which he would normally have worn it was just a stump!

  Kate took a more substantial gulp of her whisky, all but emptying the glass, every fibre of her being tingling with a mixture of fear and excitement. She was right about Haslar, had to be – it was too much of a coincidence – and the jigsaw pieces fitted together exactly, just as she’d expected them to when she had acted on her reckless impulse to check out his garage. His easy convivial manner had thrown her for a moment, giving rise to doubts in her own mind about her suspicions but she knew now that she had been right all along – Neville Haslar was Strawfoot and she was trapped in the living room of a murderous psychopath.

  Almost too casually, she took another sip of her whisky and reached forward, ostensibly to place her nearly empty tumbler on the coffee table, which occupied the centre of the room, while her body tensed for the lunge for the door she knew she would have to make when the opportunity arose.

  But then he was facing her again, his glass fully charged, and watching her with a faint smile playing about his thin lips, almost as if he could read her mind.

  ‘Why, your hands are trembling, Sergeant,’ he said, suddenly stepping forward and bending down to grip her wrist tightly for a moment. ‘Surely I don’t make you feel nervous, do I?’

  Kate gently prised her wrist free and forced herself to sit back in the chair. ‘Not at all, Mr Haslar,’ she said. ‘I’m just a little chilly, that’s all.’

  His sharp blue eyes fastened on her face for a moment before he straightened up and took her glass back to the cabinet. ‘Perhaps a top-up is in order then,’ he said, his back towards her as he poured her another whisky. ‘They do say whisky has warming properties, don’t they?’

  But then he had wheeled round with a speed and agility Kate would never have thought he was capable of, blocking the doorway even as she sprang from her chair, whisky slopping from the glass he held in his hand and over the cuff of his shirt.

  ‘You can’t leave before you’ve finished your drink, Sergeant,’ he said, his gaze dropping from her flushed face to her clenched fists. ‘That would be oh so rude.’ He nodded towards her chair. ‘So why don’t you just sit down again, eh?’

  And there was menace in his tone this time as he backed away from her a few feet to kick the living-room door shut with his heel before setting the glass of whisky down on the coffee table.

  ‘So my hunch was right?’ she said quietly. ‘You are the man we’ve been looking for?’

  He gave a theatrical bow. ‘Strawfoot at your service, ma’am.’

  ‘So it was you who left those parcels on my doorstep?’

  He shrugged. ‘Well obviously. I thought it would make things a bit more interesting.’

  ‘So why choose me?’

  ‘Well, I didn’t at the start. Originally the plan was to quietly deposit each parcel at Highbridge nick, addressed to the senior investigating officer but then in the afternoon after Melanie Schofield’s body was discovered, curiosity drew me back to the scene of my crime – a lot of murderers re-visit the scene like that, I believe. Anyway, I saw you turn up and was immediately attracted to you. There were a lot of press reporters there and, professing to be a member of “the clan”, I was able to learn from one of them who you were and that you were something of a celebrity after the Twister case. How could I not choose you after that?’

  ‘But how did you find out where I lived?’

  ‘Oh that was easy. The reporter also disclosed that you lived in a nice thatched cottage in Burtle with an eccentric colleague named Hayden who owned a red Mk II Jag. You had it made, he said – bit of jealousy there I think – but finding you as a result of his pique was then made simple.’

  ‘As simple as setting up Copely to take the fall for you, I suppose?’ she said bitterly. ‘ “Et tu, Brute?” – he couldn’t have been more apt with his Julius Caesar quote, could he? Stabbed in the back by someone he trusted.’

  He raised his eyebrows. ‘Is that what he said? I never realized he knew Shakespeare. But, yes, you’re quite correct. I have been quite the Judas – or Brutus, if you prefer.

  ‘When I came up with my little plan soon after joining the historical society and reading about Strawfoot in Will Fallow’s book, I happened to be running Maurice home, following an evening out at our local pub – my turn to drive, you see – when we were stopped by police on a routine check. Maurice was really hostile towards them and when I queried this later, he confided in me that he had a thin
g about the police after having once been wrongly accused by them of touching up little girls. He said he’d subsequently been acquitted but as mud tends to stick in such cases, I knew he would make the ideal patsy for me and it was surprisingly easy to set him up.’

  Kate nodded. ‘Like planting the straw dolls in his shed, fabricating his fingerprints on the parcel and making him look even more guilty by persuading him to run after you had convinced Janice Young to withdraw her alibi?’ She grimaced. ‘Ironic that the so-called friend who could have backed up his claim that he was in the hide bird-watching the night Claire Topping was killed had actually left early to commit the murder.’

  Haslar chuckled. ‘Oh, that flu thing was a stroke of genius on my part, I agree. It enabled me to slide away without any questions being asked – in the same way as it provided me with a cast-iron alibi for the murders of the witch woman and Melanie Schofield.’

  ‘Strange how your wife never wondered what her so sick husband was doing wandering about the Levels in the middle of the night?’

  He shrugged. ‘Denise wouldn’t have heard the sound of the roof collapsing,’ he replied. ‘She took sleeping tablets, you see, and was out for the count as soon as her head hit the pillow – coupled with which, we had separate rooms – so I had the perfect alibi. As far as she was concerned, her poor hubby was in bed all night. As for the daytime, she worked in Bridgwater from ten most mornings until about 5.30, so she would have had no idea what I was up to. A perfect situation for me.’

  ‘Fabricating Copely’s fingerprints on the second parcel you left me must have been more difficult, though,’ Kate persisted.

  ‘Oh, I didn’t fabricate them,’ he replied. ‘He unwittingly provided them for me. You see, I actually visited the library – ostensibly on a research mission – the week before I contracted the bout of pretend flu that was so necessary to enable me to miss the witch woman’s talk and I simply asked him for the loan of the library’s Sellotape. Then I enlisted his help in repairing the tear in a document file I was holding – which I subsequently removed when I got home so I could re-apply it to my parcel later on. As the file was plastic, it was quite an easy thing to do too—’