Jericho Road: A Nathan Hawk Mystery (The Nathan Hawk Mystery series Book 5)

by Douglas Watkinson

  Finchum parked just beyond the glare of the lights his colleagues were running off the patrol car battery. He got out and stretched his body into a workable version of itself.

  “What have we got?” he asked his young colleagues.

  “Body’s in that building, sir. Young woman, name of Marianne. We estimate she’s been there three weeks. We’ve taped off the area, as you can see, set up some lighting...”

  “Yeah, good work. Sir?”

  He’d heard me get out of the Land Rover and walk across to him. He held out a hand and introduced himself.

  “This gentleman is Mister Nathan Hawk,” said Jack. “The lady is Doctor Laura Peterson.”

  Finchum thought he recognised my name but wasn’t sure.

  “I used to be you,” I said.

  He held up a forefinger as he found me somewhere on his mental newsfeed. Whether I was good news or bad, I couldn’t tell. He was a university copper for sure, early forties with an emerging belly to prove it. Full head of hair, though, brown, in a schoolboy cut, not because he’d chosen that style but because it wouldn’t settle any other way.

  He perched his cup on the bonnet of his car took a mask from his inside pocket and snapped it over his mouth and nose, then held out a hand for Jack’s torch.

  “Right, let’s have a look.”

  He went into the barn alone and must’ve been gone for twenty minutes. We saw the occasional flash from his mobile as he took photos but he emerged without any evidence. He’d decided, rightly, to leave gathering that to the forensic mob from Buckingham.

  He smiled at me. “God forbid I get ‘em out of bed before dawn, right, guvnor?”

  He told Jack and Jill to close the barn door and make sure that whoever took over from them, end of shift, knew the score.

  “Poor little devil,” he said of Marianne to the grown-ups. “Poor parents. He’s about right, though, the boy. Three weeks I’d say.”

  “I agree.”

  “D’you mind if we...?” He gestured to the Land Rover. “I mean I’d invite you into mine but the back’s got two child seats bolted in.”

  When we were settled he leaned forward, forearms on the back of our seats, chin resting on his hands.

  “I’ve got to ask you this, today, tomorrow, next week, so why not right now? She wasn’t known to you, I take it?”

  “Never met her,” I said.

  “Then why were you here?”

  I adjusted the rear view mirror so that I could see his face, interpret its movement while I told him the story. I began with Heinrich Himmler’s watch and ended with finding the body. I left out the bit where I poked around in Marianne’s rucksack, knowing that he’d soon discover her real name for himself. When I’d finished he sat up and thought for a while, long enough for me to turn in my seat to remind him we were still there.

  “I wanted it to be simple,” he said.

  “Is it ever?”

  “I meant ... easy. The killer to leave me a note saying how, where and why. Plus his phone number. Any ideas?”

  I looked at him. It was a genuine request, not mere politeness to send me on my way. “You’ve got four names to work on, haven’t you. The Bag Man, Leonard Blake...”

  “Why deny knowing her, you mean?”

  “Exactly. The barista at The Rising Sun, Steve Bellamy. By the way I told him I wouldn’t poke around in his visa details, so I’d be grateful if...”

  He was already shaking his head. “Pulls a good pint, for an Aussie.”

  “Terry Baines, the guy who phoned me. Christ it seems like a month ago but it was only six hours.”

  “And Tom Manners,” said Finchum.

  Mention of him made Laura flinch. She wanted to say that he was a patient of hers, recently widowed and 88 years old, but she knew it made no difference. Finchum picked up on her discomfort.

  “I’ll go easy on him, don’t worry.” He yawned, as the broken sleep caught up with him. “My boss has an unwritten rule. I’ll get three weeks to make a dent in this. If I don’t he’ll farm it out to S.O.U. who’ve got enough on their plate...”

  He batted away the air in front of him to dismiss the irritation.

  “You got a decent team?” I asked.

  “Fair. Police work these days is all analysts, strategists and economists.” He smiled. “Maybe like you, guvnor, I’ll wind up thumping a senior officer.”

  I forced a smile back at him. “That all I’m known for?”

  He shook his head. “Thanks for your help. If I need more, I’ll be in touch.”

  He got out of the Land Rover, stretched himself again and went over to his young colleagues. From where I sat, at half one in the morning, looking out through the windscreen at two less than average uniforms and a DCI who would rather have been in bed, I didn’t see much hope of Marianne’s killer being caught. And certainly not in three weeks.

  - 10 -

  I’ve always been the man who solved the murder, never the one who caused it, but that’s how I began to see Marianne’s death. As my fault. Maybe that’s a perverse kind of vanity, needing to be centre stage all the time. Like son, like father. But however I tried to talk her death up, or down, I came away feeling that if I hadn’t pursued a ridiculous search for Tom Manners’s watch, asked too many questions about Marianne, then she’d still be alive.

  Sackcloth and ashes aside, it came down to this. I’d either bumped into something far larger than a skinny, twenty-something girl and I’d been in danger of blowing the lid off it, or there was a much simpler explanation. She’d been murdered my Tom Manners.

  Laura’s protest that he was a man of 88 who’d recently lost his wife didn’t really wash. How could he have murdered Marianne, she insisted, with age, grief, infirmity, and his obvious nature to prevent him. I argued that if men of 90 can run a marathon they can murder people.

  And Tom was no decrepit old git. He was fit as a flea, with all marbles rolling and a bloated sense of his own importance, a venomous mistrust of his fellow man. He’d already twigged that Marianne was the one who’d nicked his watch so he’d have gone looking for her whether I’d come onto the scene or not. He’d confronted Leonard Blake, made a name for himself, gained an audience of witnesses who’d seen him cut The Bag Man’s guy ropes.

  I tried to clear my mind by turning domestic. Late Friday afternoon, in a surreptitious apron, sleeves rolled up, I was sealing a venison joint which a friend in the village had given me. Mrs Beeton was by my side. Her mind was on the job, mine was elsewhere, giving orders, dispensing praise, admonishment where necessary. All in the cause of murder. Christ, my pulse rate was ten points above its usual, just from thinking about it.

  Finchum’s would be beating at around 72 a minute, I was sure, his inquiry barely under weigh, the basic questions still unanswered. Who was she? Where did she come from? What was she doing in a quietish market town fifty miles from London? Who hated her enough to cave her skull in, to say nothing of their indifference to leaving her on a cold stone floor for the wildlife to feast on? The gamut was still to be run, by Finchum and his young contemptibles: was it a crime of passion, revenge, accident, sexual encounter gone wrong and a dozen other reasons...

  I surfaced gradually when I heard Laura’s car pull onto the gravel and park under the beech tree. She was early. Maybe this was the day she’d enter through the back door and say words to the effect of ‘Okay, then, let’s do this marriage thing.’ Not today. Instead she walked across the kitchen, kissed me on the cheek and said,

  “Looks wonderful.”

  “Venison,” I said, applying bacon strips to the joint.

  “And how that pinny suits you! Before I forget, do you mind if I give Tom Manners your number?”

  “I assumed he had it...”

  “No, he phoned me half an hour ago wanting you again. He says the police are at his house, searching it.”

  I made a flimsy effort at being disgruntled as I untied my apron. Laura was trying to say there was no reason to rush to Tom’
s side, it could wait till this evening or even tomorrow. I referred her to Mrs Beeton and the next stage of the venison roast and left.

  ***

  To be fair, the people turning over Tom’s house were doing it discreetly, professionally. In fact the only sign that police were even there was an unmarked, black Audi parked outside Bird’s Eye View. A couple of wellied-up coppers were prodding around in the wild flower section, as Tom called his weeds. The youngest copper nodded at me. I nodded back.

  The front door was ajar and I entered, calling out Tom’s name. A girl, a roped in Community Support Officer, more used to returning lost dogs than dealing with murder suspects, emerged from the living room and in a mix of fear and excitement blurted,

  “Can I help, sir?”

  I knew that whatever I said to her she would need to refer it to Finchum, even if I’d asked her the time.

  “I don’t think so.”

  I pointed at Tom who was through in the kitchen, seated and sulking, arms folded. Without looking up at me he said,

  “Put the wood in the hole, did you? So long as it’s not you paying the bill, let’s open all the doors, all the windows, let the heat out.”

  What a dear old eccentric, I tried thinking. “Tom, it’s summer. It’s warmer out there than it is in here. Yes, they say it’s going to be cooler tomorrow but only because of the wind ... Christ, why are we talking about the weather?”

  “I’m not. You are. You found my watch yet?”

  “You have heard, I take it, that Marianne’s been murdered?”

  “That’s the end of that, then. Even if your lot do find it among her things they’ll trouser it.”

  “They are not ‘my lot’. In many way I am as far removed...”

  It was my fault as much as Tom’s, a feature of our commonality, my inability to not argue the toss with him, his not to argue it back. The Community Support Officer had found her nerve.

  “Excuse me, sir, but could I know...?”

  “Hawk,” I said. “Who are you?”

  “Carol, but that isn’t...”

  “Carol, where’s Mr Finchum?”

  “Upstairs,” Tom chipped in. “Left at the top for the bedroom, right for the bathroom.”

  I even considered arguing that with him, devoid of controversy though it was. I stepped around PCSO Carol and headed up the stairs.

  The bedroom was work in progress, three coppers, one teaching the other two how to scour a room for evidence, everything from pubic hairs to pyjamas, though what bearing either might have had on Marianne’s death remained to be seen. Stuff was being bagged up and placed in a large carrier. The guru looked at me.

  “Yes, sir?”

  He was a pleasant enough uniformed sergeant, late forties, but tiring of his pupils. They were simply tired. A generational thing.

  “Finchum?” I asked.

  He pointed across to the bathroom.

  Finchum was there with a young female officer, attractive but severe on the eye. Hair dyed a colour that wasn't on any palette I’d ever seen.

  “Evening, Mr Hawk,” he said, with a kind of trick or treat smile. “I thought you might show up. We do have a search warrant, by the way.”

  He produced the paperwork from his inside pocket and handed it to me. I didn’t take it.

  “Looking for what?”

  “Evidence in connection with the murder of Maryan Kashani.” He spelled out the name for me. “Like you, I thought she might be French, she turns out to be an Arab of some sort. She was killed by two blows to the side of the head, according to the pathologist, almost certainly from a two pound lump hammer.”

  He pointed at the far wall to an evidence bag containing what he assumed was the murder weapon. He’d found it in the airing cupboard, up on a shelve, visible but not too visible.

  “All ready for you to find?” I said.

  He shrugged. That was the way of it sometimes. Blood on the head of it too, by the look. It had been given a cursory wipe, yes, but DNA in its easiest form. There might even be prints. I wondered whether to share the fact that when I’d examined the cupboard a week earlier it was bare but he’d have done the shrugging thing again and we’d have agreed to differ. He’d have maintained it was put there by Tom, I would have countered that, given Tom’s love of his carpentry tools, he’d have cleaned the hammer and replaced it in the wastepaper basket in his bedroom. In other words it had been planted.

  I waited downstairs until Finchum and his crowd were finished. He creaked his way down the stairs, three carrier bags of takeaway evidence in his hands. He raised his voice at Tom as if being 88 had made him deaf and stupid.

  “That’s quite a collection of tools you’ve got upstairs, Mr Manners. We’re taking some of them away...”

  “Can he do that?” Tom asked me.

  “He certainly can.”

  “And then I’ll ask you to accompany me to Thame police station, to answer a few questions.”

  Tom looked at him coldly, piercing the outward shell. “Your problem is you're too bloody pleased with yourself. Deep down you know you’re useless.”

  “And Tom's not going anywhere today,” I added. “You take whatever you fancy to forensics and depending on what they find, his solicitor might let him talk to you.”

  “I haven’t got a solicitor,” said Tom.

  “Then we’ll get you one,” I said.

  He stood up at last, but I was the one in his firing line.

  “D’you know how much they cost?”

  “Tom, for fuck’s sake...”

  I looked up at the ceiling and found a modicum of calmth there. When it filtered through I told Finchum I wanted to see everything he was taking away and a list that tallied with it. And he should make sure nobody touched the horses on their way out.

  - 11 -

  Tom phoned Laura the following morning to have a moan about me. It didn’t come as a surprise. I just hoped she hadn’t taken his comments to heart. I was unreliable, arrogant and probably bent, he’d said, just the endorsement you need when you’ve asked a woman to marry you.

  That evening she brought a Chinese takeaway to Beech Tree and, yet again, tried to teach me how to use chopsticks. Yet again she failed and I resorted to spoon and fork. As we cleared away the debris she asked if I wanted anything pressing. I tried to be romantic, sensing there’d been a lack of it lately when there should have been a surfeit.

  “Your body against mine?” I suggested.

  It wasn’t really my verbal style, but she came up close and did as I’d suggested, the complete works, breasts, stomach, hips, legs and then asked again if I needed a shirt pressing for tomorrow. We were going to the Leveque garden party, which I’d forgotten about.

  I went upstairs to fetch an expensive embroidered shirt, handed down to me by my son Jaikie, who’d worn it once to the Cannes film festival so couldn’t possibly be seen wearing it again.

  ***

  Wotton House was the kind of place my father pretended he was glad he didn’t own while secretly wishing that he did. Money was the intervening factor, of course.

  I hadn’t told Laura but I already knew the place from when Francis Cornell and his wife owned it. They were skittle and bowling ball, in every sense. He was skinny and easily knocked over, Sylvia was round and heavy. One would’ve seemed pointless without the other. And, by God, they could drink.

  That wasn’t our only mutual interest. Sylvia had three flat coat retrievers and, seeing me out walking one day, shortly after I’d moved to Winchendon, she insisted that Dogge and I join them at the house, on the first Sunday of every month, for what she called ‘training to guns’. It amounted to some hapless student relative being paid to hurl decoy ducks into the lake half a mile away, at which point Sylvia would give the order to fire and off the dogs would go.

  There was a downside to the fact that they cared more about their dogs than the house they lived in. The magnificent 17th century pile had started to crumble, leak and smell. Gas and blocked drains we
re the day to day problems, falling masonry the long term ones. The front of the place was parting company with the rest of it, Sylvia would declare in her posh foghorn voice. The Victorian cowboy builder who’d repaired it a hundred years previously, was buried in the local churchyard and she occasionally threatened to dig him up and have him do a proper job...

  Then one day, six years ago, Frank told me he’d been diagnosed with cancer of every organ he’d ever heard of and some that he hadn’t. He had three months left and became the second person I’d watched die piece by piece. The first was my own wife. The last thing he said to me was,

  “Don’t let Sylvia get too weepy about me, then fix her up with somebody else, if you can.”

  Three days after that he pegged it. Sylvia sold the house to Rollo Leveque and moved up to Scotland. A year later she re-married, at 80. I haven’t heard from her since, but if she walked into my kitchen tomorrow we’d carry on talking from where we left off, a benchmark of good friendship.

  Rollo Leveque set about restoring Wotton House and local folklore said it had cost him three times as much as he’d paid for it. I was interested to see the result so I made an effort. I dug out a light cotton suit that I’d bought 15 years previously, making great play of the fact that I could still get into it. Though I say it myself, it didn’t look too bad on me. Laura looked stunning as ever in a bluey grey number and silly shoes. Her description not mine.

  It could easily have turned out to be one of those garden parties, those colourless village dos that I dread, but for several reasons this one was to prove far more interesting. The basics were all there, of course, and in fine style - free booze, sumptuous food, a string quartet dirging away on the periphery. Overlaying it all, though, was the politely vicious gossip, simmering wherever you turned. At one point it almost boiled over when my good friend Martin Falconer arrived with a woman young enough to be his daughter. As he came towards me, all set to introduce his companion, I had an overwhelming desire to protect him from the scorn of his neighbours and then to take him aside and smack his face for believing that a woman half his age had fallen for his charm and good looks and not his 1000 acre farm. I held off.