Murder on the Edge (Detective Inspector Skelgill Investigates Book 3)

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Murder on the Edge (Detective Inspector Skelgill Investigates Book 3) Page 9

by Bruce Beckham


  ‘But say he just took the amount of cash he needed? If it were for some dodgy deal, he’d maybe think he couldn’t be double-crossed. Look at Harris – his phone and wallet are gone, there might be a laptop missing, and no trace of his motorbike.’

  Skelgill seems uncomfortable with the notion of petty robbery as a motive. His features agonise as he takes a deep breath, inhaling and exhaling, before he speaks.

  ‘Easy enough to lose a bike in a lake, Leyton.’

  Again there is a hiatus, before DS Jones raises another question.

  ‘And no sightings of vehicles near the disposal sites, Guv?’

  With an inclination of his head, Skelgill refers her inquiry to DS Leyton.

  ‘They were all spark out at the youth hostel. The staff bunk down early because they have to be up first thing – and you know how hard it is to wake teenagers once they’re asleep.’

  DS Jones looks rather amused by this statement.

  ‘That’s me, still.’

  ‘Lucky you – wait till you’ve got some little ’uns bouncing on your head at six in the morning.’

  DS Jones glances at Skelgill, but his expression is inscrutable. DS Leyton continues.

  ‘The other place – to get up to Sharp Edge by the shortest route – it’s along a tiny back road to nowhere. There’s a rough parking area for hillwalkers. A car left overnight wouldn’t look especially out of place – and the chances of anyone passing in the early hours are ten percent of nothing. We’re checking with local farmers, but no takers so far.’

  DS Jones leans back and crosses her legs – it is warmer today and she has opted for just a short skirt and ballet-style pumps, with a sleeveless t-shirt top. She must notice that she has drawn the gaze of both of her colleagues, for she self-consciously places the papers on the edge of Skelgill’s desk and reaches forward to clasp her hands around her uppermost knee.

  ‘It seems a heck of a lot of trouble – to take a body into the hills.’

  ‘That’s what’s bugging us, Jones.’ Skelgill stretches skywards and rests his hands for a moment behind his head. There are fresh droplets of sweat spotting the armpits of his shirt. ‘It’s the crux of the case.’

  ‘In what way, Guv?’ DS Jones strives to maintain eye contact.

  ‘There’s a message here, for someone – us, maybe.’

  Skelgill’s subordinates unite in a respectful silence to acknowledge the gravity of his statement. After half a minute it is DS Jones who finally voices a thought.

  ‘When is the news going to be released, Guv?’

  ‘There’s a conference at one.’

  ‘Are you involved, Guv?’

  Skelgill scowls and leans back and stares at the ceiling. ‘I feel a puncture coming on.’

  DS Jones glances surreptitiously at DS Leyton, who raises an eyebrow as if to say ‘upon his own head be it’. They know well Skelgill’s antipathy to journalistic gatherings, but the Chief will be expecting him to be present – if not to address the press pack directly.

  ‘It might flush something out, at least, Guv – as far as the victims are concerned.’

  Skelgill sits forward again and with a flourish of his pen casually scrawls four rough circles on his desk pad.

  ‘What worries me, Jones, is that the killings are random.’ He marks a cross between the circles. ‘If they are, even their unabridged autobiographies won’t help us.’

  Again a silence pervades the office. Skelgill has the window ajar, and the song of a blackbird quite close at hand fills the temporary void with its melodic mourning lilt. All three detectives appreciate only too well the spectre Skelgill has raised: there is a certain type of serial killer for whom only one thing makes them stop – and that is getting caught.

  DS Jones clears her throat and her colleagues glance her way.

  ‘What do you think about there being an accomplice, Guv?’

  ‘Quite possible.’

  Skelgill’s instantaneous reply catches DS Leyton by surprise.

  ‘Really, Guv?’

  Plainly it is news to him that his boss is thinking along these lines – when Skelgill has thus far been determined that a single person could transport the bodies. DS Leyton remains wide-eyed but he does not protest further – the idea of one person hauling the dead weight of a grown man has clearly been at odds with his estimation.

  ‘Stands to reason, Leyton.’ Skelgill springs to his feet and snatches up the car keys that rest on top of his towering in-tray. He strides out of the door with a parting shot. ‘Takes four fit blokes to stretcher a casualty off the fells – and that’s downhill. You’d want certifying to take the weight the other way.’

  11. SHARP EDGE – Thursday, midday

  At the parking place along the ‘tiny back road to nowhere’ (as DS Leyton put it), Skelgill, who has changed into outdoor gear, is methodically loading stones from a collapsed wall into a large army surplus backpack. He has lined this with a sturdy woven rubble-sack, and chooses with care, weighing each boulder in turn, rejecting some as either too light or too heavy (or perhaps too angular), before lowering them into position. The rucksack stands upright on the flatbed of his estate car, about a foot from the rear sill. The car’s suspension creaks a protest with each new addition. On the face of it, he might be making a collection for some gardening project – a rockery, perhaps.

  But, no. When the bag is almost full, he tightens the drawstring, buckles down the hood, and turns to sit with his back against it. He shrugs his shoulders into the straps and adjusts them to fit. Without further ado – other than taking a deep breath and bearing his teeth in a fearsome grimace – he pitches forward, pivoting at the hips and levering the burden from the car. As he intimated to DS Leyton, it is a method he has marvelled at when employed by diminutive Tamang porters – lifting huge composite bundles of trekkers’ rucksacks held only by a head-strap or naamlo. On occasion it takes a giggling gaggle of kinsmen to raise one man to his feet and set him in motion.

  Without such assistance Skelgill staggers drunkenly, alarmingly in fact, and only the close proximity of a wooden farm gate prevents him from toppling over and ending up on his back, kicking like a stranded beetle. Swearing colourfully, beads of perspiration breaking out upon his brow, he clings on to the uppermost bar of the gate until he steadies himself. But this is no time to dwell. He wrenches up the bandana that he wears around his neck to form a sweatband, and, bent over like the crooked man of the nursery rhyme, unsteadily retraces his steps to his car. He drags his walking poles clattering from amongst the untidy debris of assorted tackle. Using one of the poles he tries to snag the hank of baler twine – Cleopatra’s makeshift leash – that hangs from one of the rear coat-pegs. This proves tricky and he is almost defeated, but at what might be the final attempt he manages to hook it and transfer it to his back pocket. Finally, reaching up blind, with outstretched fingertips he just obtains sufficient purchase to wrench down the tailgate. Then he produces a short piercing whistle.

  ‘Come on, lass.’

  Belying her age – which is currently uncertain, though undoubtedly well into maturity in doggy years – Cleopatra springs through the gap in the wall from the pasture she has been exploring. A matted wad of blackish silage dangles from one side of her muzzle rather like a half-smoked cigar, complementing her Churchillian demeanour. However, the similarity ends here, for the great wartime leader was not known to eat his Cuban coronas. She circles Skelgill, probably rather too closely for comfort, and gets a poke in her sturdy rear from one of his poles. He can’t now bend to tie her onto the twine, but she seems to know his mind as, obediently, she trots ahead, leading the way across the lane to pick up the worn path that is their route to Scales Tarn.

  From here the ascent, relatively short in terms of distance, breaks into three distinct stages. First, there is the climb up through Mousthwaite Comb, an increasingly steep valley that accounts for roughly half of the required height gain. Second, there is the respite of a traverse across the north-eastern f
lank of Scales Fell, where the gradient rises imperceptibly. And third is the sting in the tail, a short, sharp five-hundred-foot haul up beside Scales Beck to its source at the eponymous tarn.

  Ordinarily, Skelgill would deal with this degree of difficulty without breaking sweat or straining his capacious fell-runner’s lungs. Even carrying a regulation fifty-pound backpack, sufficient to sustain him for a week in the hills, tent, food and all, he would set a brisk pace and spend his time admiring the scenery. No so today. Walking flat-footed and bent almost double beneath the extraordinary (and yet only human) weight, and despite the mountainous incentive to get the crazy masochistic experiment over and done with, Skelgill does rather exude the appearance of one on his last legs. He is not assisted by the warm, muggy conditions and the fact that the entire route is in the lee of the hill to his left, sheltered from the day’s light westerly breeze.

  Nonetheless, there is a limit to how slowly a person can actually walk and, inch by inch, step by step, he makes steady if unspectacular progress. At one point he is overtaken by a group of hurrying hikers, four well-equipped and lively sounding young guys who look like they know what they are doing. Their conversation wanes as they pass him, perhaps recognising something of his ordeal, and – when their chatter resumes a few moments later – they can be heard speculating in awed tones whether he might be an SAS trooper in training. Perhaps hearing this spurs a flagging Skelgill on and, one hundred minutes after setting out, several litres of body fluid the lighter, he sheds the rucksack and throws himself full length and fully clothed into the cold, clear waters of Scales Tarn. As he submerges his burning muscles, his already lofty estimation of Nepalese porters has surely soared to Himalayan heights.

  He surfaces to find himself face to face with a rather bemused-looking Bullboxer. Cleopatra has waded out to join him, and now seems dismayed that he has failed to produce whatever prey item it was that he dived for so eagerly. Skelgill blows a spout of water out over the dog; amusingly she makes a leap for this, and as he follows her trajectory a splash of pink up on the fell catches his eye.

  Then he hears the faint cry for help.

  Struggling to his feet he extends a downturned palm to the dog. She seems to understand this command and immediately stiffens, watching him avidly. Skelgill pulls off his bandana, for it is causing water to trickle down his brow. He stares hard, shielding his eyes with his left hand from the brightness of the sky above the dark line of the ridge. The plaintive exhortation comes again. Someone is in trouble on Sharp Edge.

  Without further hesitation he wades to the shore and jogs past his abandoned rucksack and poles. He could loop around and pick his way along the arête, but instead he opts for the direct route, three hundred feet up the steep southern flank, over loose soil and scree and smooth slabs that slope at a dizzying sixty degrees. But Skelgill, his wet clothes sticking to his body, swarms up like a bedraggled Spider-Man refusing to be vanquished. Perhaps an equally remarkable sight, though, is the faithful hound at his heels – what the sturdy creature lacks in finesse she more than makes up for in dogged determination. Skelgill might reflect that four feet and sixteen claws have their uses where gravity is concerned.

  The cries – they are of a woman – are becoming increasingly desperate, and Skelgill pauses to bellow that help is at hand and the stranded person should hold on for another minute. But when he gets within about thirty feet he sees that she is in fact a small girl – perhaps aged seven or eight. The explanation for the vocal mismatch becomes clear when he pulls himself up beside her – he realises there is another female beyond and below, a youngish woman who clings to the upslope halfway between them and the walker’s path that shadows the scrambler’s route.

  The girl is ashen faced and perched astride the very crest of the arête, frozen with fear and rightly so, for the drop to Scales Tarn is not easily survivable; recorded deaths on Sharp Edge number in double figures. In mountain rescue parlance, she is cragfast. Skelgill wedges himself into a crevice so he can’t go anywhere, and reaches out and takes a grip on one strap of the denim dungarees she wears.

  ‘It’s alright, lass – you’re safe now. What’s your name?’

  The girl’s lower lip turns out, and tears begin to stream down her cheeks – but no words are forthcoming.

  ‘She’s called Rhian – her name’s Rhian!’

  Skelgill glances down at the mother – or aunt or cousin or whatever relation or otherwise the woman might be.

  ‘Get yourself back down to the path and stay there!’

  Skelgill’s bark is fierce, but he knows Sharp Edge’s marginally less formidable northern flank has taken its share of casualties down the years. The woman holds out her hands despairingly. There is fear in her dark eyes but she begins to comply with his order. He watches with concern.

  ‘Take it steady – keep a firm grip with both hands each time you move a foot.’

  As all mountaineers know, twice as many accidents happen on the descent, when momentum, restricted vision and fatigue unite to summon ill fortune. But the woman is at least athletic in her movements, and with the prescribed care she makes it back to the narrow mudstone shingle ledge that is the path. Now Skelgill turns his attention to the girl.

  ‘Right, little lady – think you can climb down with me?’

  The girl shakes her head.

  ‘Rhian – is that your Mum?’

  She nods once.

  ‘You’re a better climber than her, aren’t you?’

  Another nod.

  ‘So you can do better than she just did.’

  A blank stare.

  ‘Look – I’ll go first, just ahead of you. If you slip – I’ll catch you.’

  As soon as he has uttered the word slip Skelgill must inwardly curse his own slip of the tongue – she shrinks away from him and clutches more desperately at the rock in front of her. In the explosive wake of this embedded command her confidence plummets away like a landslide. Only once has he experienced vertigo brought on by fear of falling – but he knows that if the girl is similarly struck then all her instincts will be screaming at her to cling on for dear life.

  For a moment he looks at her as if he’s sizing up the possibility of making a grab and taking her down over his shoulder. But in their exposed position there is a risk that the girl will panic and kick herself free. Then an idea must come. Still holding her in his firm grip, he casts about for sight of the dog – but in the interim the inquisitive Cleopatra has descended to investigate the other stranger, and is providing moral support of a fashion as mum, on bended knee, anxiously watches proceedings above.

  ‘Do you have a dog, Rhian?’

  A slight but perceptible shake of the head.

  ‘When we get down in a minute, I’m going to have to put my dog on a lead. That’s because if she chases sheep, a farmer could shoot her. We wouldn’t want that, would we?’

  Now a more discernable shake.

  ‘Do you think you could hold the dog’s lead for me?’

  A slight nod.

  ‘She’d like that. Her name’s Cleopatra.’

  ‘We’ve done Cleopatra at school.’

  Bingo. Or so must Skelgill be saying to himself.

  ‘Well, my Cleopatra – just like the Egyptian queen – can be a bit naughty. But I reckon you can manage her, eh?’

  ‘Aha.’

  ‘Okay then, here’s what we’ll do.’

  With his free hand Skelgill reaches into the damp recess of his back pocket. Slowly he draws out the hank of baler twine.

  ‘Cleopatra’s a Bullboxer – that means she’s very strong. So I have this special unbreakable string – that’s what I use for her lead. It’ll keep her safe.’

  The girl stares curiously at the bright blue twine.

  One-handed, Skelgill shakes out the twine and presents a tied end. A little pink hand tentatively reaches forward and small fingers close around the loop. He lifts up the other end, which also has a knotted loop. He clenches his fist around it with
a gesture of import.

  ‘In one minute, this will be Cleopatra.’

  He winks, and the girl winks back.

  Together, jerkily, painstakingly at first, and then more easily, with Skelgill a yard below and the magic baler twine dangling loosely between them, they begin to scramble down. In the dry conditions it is not so difficult; the girl has her mother’s innate agility, and it really does just take a minute to cover the thirty feet or so in order to gain the protection of the path.

  As might be anticipated, mum envelops daughter in a great hug, the former’s eyes brimming with tears of relief and thanks as she gazes at Skelgill standing close behind. He reaches out to place a palm on the little one’s head, but the woman intercepts and gives his fingers a long hard squeeze. He looks somewhat sheepish held in this pose. But quickly he turns to practical matters. With the thumb of his free hand he indicates the dangers of the steep downslope.

  ‘Let’s get off here – we’ll stop beside the tarn.’

  Mother nods and detaches herself from her daughter. At this point Skelgill skilfully renegotiates the plan, suggesting that they allow Cleopatra free to lead them to the water, where the girl can take her for a drink, and after that hold her on the leash. This finds agreement, and in Indian file they cautiously retrace the steps the small family party made before going astray.

  Soon the narrow walker’s path swings over the broadening ridge to merge with the scrambling route, and widens out as it dips down to the tarn and the outfall of Scales Beck. Though they are well above the treeline, Skelgill manages to find a stick – a splinter of charred kindling discarded by a wild camper – which he tosses ostentatiously into the shallows. Cleopatra needs little encouragement to retrieve the item, and in no time the girl is having great fun in repeating the procedure.

  Her mother and Skelgill stand rather self-consciously a few yards away and a couple of paces apart, their attention somewhat artificially fixed upon the boisterous game. After a longer pause than must be comfortable for either of them, it is the woman who breaks the silence.

 

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