Jess Castle and the Eyeballs of Death

by M B Vincent

  ‘Bogna does a cracking shepherd’s pie.’ The Judge sat back.

  ‘She does.’ It was what angels would taste like. If you minced them.

  ‘Bit hot on the old portion control, though.’ The Judge rubbed his stomach. ‘I heard you were in Mum’s shop today.’

  ‘How d’you know that?’

  ‘Castle Kidbury jungle drums.’

  ‘I volunteered. One morning and afternoon a week. Reminds me of Mum.’ She decided against telling him about her brush with Pan. ‘She used to bring all sorts of tat home. Like that fox that’s gone missing. You never really liked it.’

  ‘Always hated it. Reminded me of a red-haired fellow I was in chambers with.’

  ‘Mum loved it, though.’

  ‘Mum had funny ideas sometimes.’

  The scrape of fork on plate.

  Chapter 15

  AN OFFERING ON KIDBURY HENGE

  Wednesday 25 May

  ‘Morning!’ Jess sauntered into DS Eden’s office.

  ‘Morning.’ Eden’s mind was elsewhere. Perhaps on the untidy stack of files he was filleting. He looked up. ‘Hang on, how did—’

  ‘I’m on the case, aren’t I?’ grinned Jess. The truth was that the vast influx of worker bees into Margaret Thatcher Way had reduced the efficiency of the gatekeeper. ‘I brought you these.’ She dropped a box of doughnuts on Eden’s desk. ‘Brain food.’ He hadn’t called. Not for the first time, she was styling it out in the face of a man’s indifference. ‘Thought I might give you a hand.’

  Eden lifted the lid of the box with a pen. As if the doughnuts might be dusted for prints. ‘You mean you thought you could nose around.’

  ‘Can’t it be both?’ Jess helped herself to a wheeled chair that almost ran away with her. ‘What’s the latest on Squeezers?’ Her mouth was already full of sugar strands. For the moment, she would hold her encounter with Pan in her back pocket. To be whipped out when Eden lost patience.

  ‘Oh, Squeezers.’ Eden shook his head, picking out a chocolate ring. ‘Knott’s got it into her head he’s Castle Kidbury’s very own Dr Crippen. Unfortunately for him he ticks some of our boxes on this case, so I can’t ignore him.’ He waved his doughnut. ‘These are good. Waitrose?’

  ‘Greggs.’

  ‘An eyewitness put Darling, Squeezers’ dog, if you can call it that, on Kidbury Road early on the morning of Gavin Blake’s murder.’

  ‘Squeezers would never let Darling wander about alone. That dog’s his world.’

  ‘Knott reasoned that he might if he was busy killing Gavin. We found the body of a dog in a hedgerow. Mown down.’ Eden put down his doughnut. Amidst the carnage, he found time to mourn a whippet. ‘As Darling is alive and well, Squeezers isn’t incriminated.’

  ‘Time you stopped picking on Squeezers. You lot behave as if he’s implicated in every crime in Castle Kidbury.’

  ‘He is.’

  ‘Yet Beefy Dave never gets pulled in. Smells like corruption to moi.’ Jess didn’t dare look at Eden as she floated that thought.

  There was a moment of charged silence. ‘If you want to carry on with your precarious role as unofficial consultant, I suggest you stop blundering about in those Doc Martens of yours. Concentrate, Jess. We have a killer to catch.’ The anger in his voice was all the more sobering for its understatement. ‘Squeezers is now released into the community having wasted police time and stunk up a custody cell. We had a whip-round for Darling, and he promised to buy her a collar. Now, do you want me to bring you up to date or do you want to turn my nick into Watergate?’

  ‘Up to date please.’ Jess was exaggeratedly humble.

  ‘We’ve looked at Keith and Gavin from every angle. Very little commonality. Gavin drove Keith home once after a trousers-down incident. Keith was once arrested for peeing on the Blakes’ garden wall.’

  ‘Did Gavin still live at home?’

  ‘Yeah. With his mum and dad. That big house by the Cheap Street crossroads.’ Eden gave her a look. ‘Why? You look perturbed.’

  ‘No reason.’ How could they, thought Jess, still live there? In the house where it all happened. Where Becky died in her little yellow swimsuit. Some people, she concluded, are dense like concrete.

  ‘Any luck with the symbols?’

  Eden looked hopeful. A blind man searching for something to hang on to. She disappointed him. ‘What worries me is why one set of symbols is Ogham and the other something so obscure I don’t recognise them.’

  ‘The killer keeping us on our toes?’

  ‘So if there’s another murder there’ll be another set of symbols?’ Jess rebuked herself when she saw how Eden shuddered at her casual mention of a third death. ‘The Ogham around the side of the box is so literal – E. Y. E. S. The four trees are another thing altogether. If I distil what the ash and the poplar and the yew and the rowan stand for, to their essence, I end up with this.’ She pulled a pad towards her. Ignored Eden’s tut at such casual procurement of his stationery. She wrote four words in capitals.

  WISDOM. VISION. AFTERLIFE. CLARITY.

  ‘They sound so benign.’ Eden was thoughtful. ‘Apart from afterlife.’

  ‘Which isn’t necessarily spooky. We all die. Pagans were more accepting of mortality. They didn’t fend it off with wonder drugs and plastic surgery. It helps, I guess, if you believe your soul carries on after death.’

  A clatter at the door and Karen Knott was among them. ‘Sir, your handler’s here.’

  ‘I’ll be there in a minute, Knott.’

  ‘Don’t keep him,’ said the DC to Jess. ‘This is important.’

  ‘Handler?’ Jess saw an opportunity to provoke. She liked those. ‘What bits of you does he handle?’

  Karen answered for her boss. ‘It’s his Media Presentation Consultant. Guv’s on telly now.’ She stood a little taller. ‘He’s got to look his best.’

  ‘It’s more to do with efficient dissemination of information,’ said Eden, hard on her heels. ‘Although they do seem obsessed with my hair.’ He passed a nervous hand over his neat head. ‘And my tie.’

  ‘You look lovely in that spotty one,’ said Karen. She turned to Jess, collaborative for once. ‘His wife used to buy him horrible ties. Didn’t she, guv? Tartan ones. Some with Disney characters on. He was a saint to wear them.’

  Jess couldn’t imagine Eden in a Winnie the Pooh tie. Nor could she imagine him wanting his defunct marriage discussed in front of him. She stayed silent.

  ‘Good thing they couldn’t have kiddies. Otherwise she’d still have a hold on him now.’

  The air went out of the room, as if one of Jess’s gods had sucked with enormous force. She had time to see the look of pain on Eden’s face, and to see it quickly smothered. ‘Knott, go and do something. Anything!’ he snapped as she hesitated.

  Another concrete person, thought Jess.

  Eden crossed his office and pulled aside one of the vertical slats that covered the window. The room was normal again. By his decree. ‘Bloody Sky News. Hovering by my nick.’ He turned and scowled at the paper on his desk. ‘All the while, every other case sits on the back burner.’

  ‘Anything I can help with?’ Jess was peachy keen. On best behaviour. Like a child hoping her parents will let her stay up late if she doesn’t cause trouble.

  ‘Only if you want to locate a missing shih-tzu, or find whoever stole Keith Dike’s van during his funeral.’

  Jess bit her lip. ‘Could that be relevant?’

  ‘Not unless someone crucified him for a white transit held together with gaffer tape.’ Eden looked at his watch. ‘Jess, I really should—’

  ‘I saw Pan in the town,’ she said. Nonchalant.

  ‘Where?’ Eden perked up.

  ‘Trying on clothes in the charity shop.’

  Eden looked thoughtful. He had, as Mary would put it, a hard-on for Pan. Eden would never put it like that himself.

  ‘I got in the changing cubicle with him. Had a few words.’

  ‘You spoke to him?’
/>
  ‘Well, actually, he spoke to me.’

  ‘Don’t talk to suspects without my supervision. We’ve been through this.’

  ‘I didn’t really plan—’

  ‘I. Don’t. Care.’

  Jess shrank. She hadn’t bargained on such a strong rebuke. ‘Sorry.’ She needed to get better at this falling-into-line stuff if she wanted to stay on the case.

  ‘Did he touch you?’

  ‘No,’ lied Jess. ‘He confessed to killing Keith Dike, then said he hadn’t. As if he doesn’t get that this is serious.’

  ‘I wonder if you get this is serious, Jess.’

  ‘Did you pull in Unthank?’

  ‘Mr Unthank came in to speak to me, yes.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘He makes a very poor impression.’

  That was putting it mildly. No need for Jess to tell Eden about her own encounter with Unthank. Not when she was still on the naughty step. ‘Alibi?’

  ‘In bed. Asleep. Alone. Trouble is, the EasySleep Inn CCTV is on the blink. No corroboration. But, before you steam ahead, no evidence he killed Gavin, either. We only have him in our sights because of the logo. I don’t know why he’d want to kill his own friend.’ Eden straightened his tie. Settled his shirt collar. Wiggled his shoulders in his high-street suit. ‘I have to get to this PR meeting. You’d better go, Jess.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘And don’t call me that.’

  She stood, cautiously lifting the doughnuts from the desk.

  ‘Leave them.’

  Harebell House cast a wide shadow in the setting sun.

  Clutching a carrier bag, Jess hopped into Rupert’s car. ‘Top down, eh?’

  ‘I thought it’d be nice,’ said Rupert. ‘You do know about nice, don’t you?’

  ‘You think you’re funny.’

  Rupert looked Jess’s scuffed black outfit up and down. ‘Good of you to dress up for the occasion.’

  Jess took in Rupert’s beautifully cut linen suit with, probably, almost certainly, Italian brogues. He was dressed as the Rupert he would become in twenty years. ‘Thank you, Rumpole. You look lovely too.’

  ‘Don’t you ever wear make-up?’

  ‘Do you like make-up?’

  ‘If it’s done right. Nice and subtle.’

  ‘You should wear it, then.’ Jess cocked one eyebrow. ‘Accentuate your cheekbones. Narrow down that nose.’ She laughed. ‘Make those pretty eyes pop!’

  ‘You think you’re funny. Right, as you insisted on booking – where to?’

  She directed him.

  Kidbury Road.

  The bridge.

  The long-stay car park.

  The medical centre.

  The vet’s.

  And then the long turn into the main thoroughfare.

  ‘I make this journey twice, three times every day,’ said Jess. ‘In Cambridge I could veer off in any direction. At home, it’s either right or left out of the drive and then you’re a hamster on a wheel. Always the same.’

  ‘Not quite. Hamsters never get anywhere.’

  ‘Exactly.’ Castle Kidbury was a town of ruts. She enjoyed the sensation of the car speeding up as they went south-east on Cheap Street, leaving the tangle of lanes behind them.

  Stuck behind a coach – ‘Rustic Ripper rubberneckers,’ said Rupert – they idled at a three-way crossroads. Jess knew what was behind the high wall on her right. She kept her head down. Didn’t hear Rupert’s chit-chat.

  It was a house of mourning now.

  ‘Shit, that’s the Blakes’ house,’ said Rupert, as they pulled away. ‘I heard Gavin’s mum and dad are packing up, going away for a while after the funeral.’

  It had taken two deaths for them to leave. Becky. Then Gavin. Two decades apart.

  She turned her head. A small rectangle on the wall. Blurred by the speed Rupert was picking up. She didn’t need to see it clearly. She knew the shape carved onto it from the dream that stalked her. A woman. The woman. Goddess. Water. Sky. Earth.

  Paid for by muggins.

  ‘Jess!’ Rupert was cheerily indignant. ‘Where have you gone? I said, is this a mystery tour?’

  ‘What else?’ said Jess.

  ‘What are we doing here?’ Rupert peered through the windscreen at the collection of tall stones that was Kidbury Henge. ‘Do they have a restaurant?’

  ‘We have a table for two,’ said Jess. ‘Come on. Let’s get in before the sun sinks any further.’

  Rupert tailed Jess up a muddy, uneven path to a wooden gate. ‘It’s locked.’

  ‘Only to the public.’ Jess slung a leg over the gate. ‘It’s always open for heathens.’ She extended her hand. ‘Come on, Rumpole. I assume that suit can be dry-cleaned.’

  ‘This is not what I had in mind when I suggested dinner.’ Rupert lifted his leg. He bent and dipped. He landed on the other side. Slapped his hands free of moss.

  Jess strode ahead. This was her territory. She stopped in the centre of the ring. Turned to take in the five ancient stones. Stumpy, irregular, in the failing light they looked ready to move.

  ‘Oh come on, haven’t you even got picnic blankets?’ Rupert’s public-school tones morphed into a whine.

  ‘Sit down and shush,’ said Jess, already cross-legged. She rummaged through the carrier bag. ‘On the à la carte menu tonight are two pasties, two sausage rolls and two eclairs with that funny long-life whipped cream and jam. Lynne didn’t have any scotch eggs.’

  ‘You went to the bloody minimart?’

  ‘Not as nice as Greggs, I admit. But the eclairs are only just past their sell-by date.’

  ‘Is this it? I’d have at least brought some bubbly if I’d known.’

  ‘Almost forgot.’ Jess pulled two cans of Dr Pepper from the bag.

  Rupert gave in. He had the ability to give in without losing face. ‘If you can’t beat them et cetera. Cheers!’

  ‘My turn to ask you the question, now,’ said Jess. When Rupert glugged like that, his Adam’s apple bobbed.

  ‘What question?’

  ‘If you’re seeing anyone.’

  Rupert shook his head. Quelled a carbonated burp. Looked horrified at himself. Recovered. ‘Last proper relationship was Pandora.’

  ‘Pandora?’ Jess found a lot wrong with the name. Too frilly.

  ‘Pandora Smith.’

  ‘Same name as that model?’

  Rupert tried to look modest.

  ‘No way! Shut up! You went out with Pandora Smith the model?’ Jess was amazed. ‘She’s world-famous. Was it all red carpets, private jets?’

  ‘I’ve known her, well, as long as I’ve known you. Our families are friends.’

  ‘What happened? Why aren’t you Mr Pandora Smith?’

  ‘She was great. We were great. Then this big contract came up for her in New York. And I –’ Rupert held up his hands – ‘just didn’t fancy it. New York’s a blast to visit. But it’s not home. And work was here. So. You know.’ He seemed embarrassed. He undid the tie he’d carefully knotted for this dinner date.

  ‘Blimey, Rupert. You gave up all that for the people of Castle Kidbury.’ Jess sat back on her heels. ‘I’m impressed.’

  ‘So I have hidden depths after all?’ Rupert smiled. A sideways smile. Made him look goofy. ‘I’m an open book compared to you, mind. Sneaking around the country like a spy. Why’d you really leave Cambridge?’

  ‘Like New York, it’s fun to visit. A lot of history there for me.’

  ‘I remember Stephen being jealous when you got in to study law. He and I both failed. Ended up at Edinburgh.’ He riffled for and found a sausage roll. ‘Loved it.’

  ‘I’m jealous of that. How you manage to love things so easily.’

  ‘You make me sound like a nitwit.’

  ‘Nah. It’s a life skill. I loathed the law. Dad insisted I apply. The Castles are lawyers, he kept saying. I dropped out after a year.’

  ‘I remember. According to Stephen, it was to annoy the Judge.’

  �
��It wasn’t!’ Jess wrinkled her nose. ‘Well, it was a bit. I switched to history. I had a passion for the subject. Not that passion we all keep hearing about, by the way. Not like an X Factor wannabe who has a passion to sing but has never left their bedroom. I mean I love the past. I was wild to learn. This was something I could do on my own. Something my family might actually admire me for.’

  ‘Sounds reasonable.’

  ‘To you, maybe. Dad stopped my money. I had no grant. The old sod earned too much. He did a big number on me about letting the family down, turning my back on the sacred Castle duty to jurisprudence.’ Jess noticed that Rupert was looking grave. ‘I told him I was too honest to be a lawyer.’

  Rupert didn’t laugh. ‘He actually refused to support you?’ Rupert lowered his voice. ‘That’s bad.’

  Jess shrugged. Sympathy made her want to throw up.

  ‘How’d you manage? I’d have given up.’

  ‘Money started appearing in my account. I’ve always assumed it was Mum. Dad and I barely talked after I dropped law. He expected Mum to toe the line and join the chorus of disapproval. She didn’t.’ Jess was only beginning to appreciate how much courage that had taken.

  ‘Maybe your mysterious benefactor was an admirer.’

  ‘They were thin on the ground, Rupert. After I graduated, I skedaddled to Exeter for my master’s and my doctorate.’

  ‘Yet you ended up back at Cambridge? Like Groundhog Day.’

  Jess didn’t laugh. ‘A lecturing post fell into my lap.’

  ‘No job just falls into your lap.’

  Jess looked up through her fringe at Rupert. ‘Want to know the truth? I was terrified. I felt like a fraud. So here I am.’

  ‘You ran away?’

  ‘You could call it that. My dad certainly does.’ The end of a jumbo sausage roll vanished into Jess’s face. ‘Thought you knew all this.’

  ‘From Stephen? I don’t talk much to your brother these days. He’s . . .’ Rupert couldn’t find the word. He patted the damp grass. ‘Lie here,’ he said. ‘Beside me.’

  She resisted. A force tugged her towards him. An equal, or perhaps greater one, pulled her away. Perhaps it was the ley lines beneath them.