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

by Bruce Beckham

  DS Jones leaps onto the bed and reaches frantically over Skelgill’s unmoving torso; his eyes are closed and saliva drains like a departing life force from one corner of his purple lips.

  ‘Guv, Guv – oh, for God’s sake, Guv!’

  She rips away the gag and the rope and slaps his cheeks. There is no response.

  ‘Guv – please, Guv!’

  There are tears streaming down her face but her training kicks in and she defaults immediately to first aid mode. Kneeling upright she places the heel of one hand upon his breastbone and prepares to begin compressions. Then his eyes flick open.

  ‘What kept you two?’

  ‘Jesus, Guv!’

  DS Jones looks like she is about to slap him again, but then she grabs his face roughly between her hands and bends over and plants her lips upon his – mouth to mouth, but not as the British Police First Aid Manual defines it.

  ‘Sergeant Jones – cuffs!’ DS Leyton ends this sentence with a final useful phrase that shocks his colleague back to the reality of the situation – he means they must restrain the suspects.

  DS Jones clambers off the bed and pulls her handcuffs from her belt. Quickly she secures the young man, and then rounds to repeat the procedure with the girl, taking DS Leyton’s proffered handcuffs. That done, she turns to unfasten Skelgill’s bonds – these are easily removed – although only if one has a free hand. Skelgill sits up, wiping his lips.

  ‘Back-up?’

  ‘On the way, Guv – I radioed just before we entered. Be here any second, I reckon.’

  Skelgill now demonstrates just how quickly a man can get dressed, especially when he knows uniformed police officers are about to burst upon a somewhat compromising situation. He pockets his personal belongings and socks, and jams on his shoes. Meanwhile DS Leyton has ordered the detainees from the room, and driven them ahead of him down the stairs. Cleopatra sits patiently, and now Skelgill squats down to stroke her behind the ears. He tugs at his shirt – the oil is making it stick, and seeping through in darker blotches.

  ‘How did you find me?’

  DS Jones perhaps suffering a sudden ebb of adrenaline, sits to face him, lowering herself onto the end of the bed. She grins and slowly shakes her head. He is incorrigible – his life just saved and it is business as usual.

  ‘The bookmaker, Guv – the Scottish woman. She lives across the road. She’d popped back to help her old mother with something – the mother spotted you walking up and down the street and thought you were a suspicious character. She called her daughter to the window – she recognised you and saw you come in here. Then a male she didn’t recognise – the young guy I guess – looked out of the door a minute or so later – he seemed to be checking that the street was all clear – then the curtains at the front of the house were pulled to. DS Leyton had given her his card. She phoned us – we were in the park just through the ginnel. DS Leyton was briefing his team – I was walking Cleopatra. As luck would have it.’

  Skelgill nods pensively.

  ‘What made you break in?’

  DS Jones flashes him a bashful glance.

  ‘Maybe women’s intuition?’

  Skelgill grins ruefully.

  ‘More likely you’re picking up my bad habits.’

  26. THE TAJ MAHAL – Friday evening

  That Skelgill has offered to treat his trusty lieutenants to a Friday night feast, signing off the week in style, ostensibly owes itself to a celebration of a job well done, and – though he has played down the bare facts, so to speak – to thank them for their timely intervention at thirty-seven Ullswater Place. Ostensibly. With Skelgill, however, nothing is ever that simple. Indeed the seasoned (and thus cynical) observer might also ascribe certain ulterior motives to his generosity, such as delivering ‘one in the eye’ to his rival DI Smart, and – not least – the excuse to partake in the virtually unlimited amount of food that always seems to be a feature of an Indian meal.

  And there is one last pudding to be proved in the eating – whether Skelgill has remembered his wallet.

  The past thirty hours have been something of an expedition for both sergeants – as if the great uncharted river they have been navigating has suddenly flowed majestically into its delta. The final outcome – its imminent confluence with the ocean – is no longer in doubt, but the myriad of channels and connections that have opened up for investigation has almost been overwhelming. The arrest has raised as many questions as it has answered.

  Skelgill, on the other hand, has for long periods kept a low profile, paddling away on his own canoe ‘to get his head round his report’. Today he reappeared just before five p.m. with what looked suspiciously like fisherman’s sunburn across his cheekbones.

  In these respects, the relaxed early-evening gathering at the Taj Mahal provides the perfect opportunity for the three colleagues to catch up and share their findings. DS Leyton, having dipped his nose in the froth atop a pint of chilled Indian lager, begins in typically self-deprecating style.

  ‘I couldn’t have been more wrong, Guv – at the start – thinking it was some crackpot randomly picking off his victims.’

  DS Jones glances sympathetically at her fellow officer.

  ‘The thing is – they did appear totally unconnected.’ She turns to Skelgill, who sits facing her across the table. ‘That was amazing how you made the link, Guv.’

  Skelgill averts his eyes; perhaps he detects an underlying note of inquiry in DS Jones’s congratulatory remark. He snaps a poppadum into two and then carefully pushes the pieces together on his plate to give the impression of an undamaged whole.

  ‘We talked about getting a break – well we got one, but I just didn’t know it at the time.’ He takes a tentative sip of his own lager, and pulls a disapproving face before swallowing a second larger mouthful, as if washing down the unpleasant taste with more of the same is the best remedy. ‘I rescue a holidaymaker’s kid up at Sharp Edge – give the mother a hard time – she claims she used to come up as a schoolgirl – when she was a member of the outward bound centre – her and her mate had a crush on the instructors – but she didn’t mention any names, and so there’s no story at this point.’

  Now he jabs at the poppadum with stiffly spread fingers and causes irreversible damage.

  ‘Until Walter Barley cops it – in ritual style with a climbing rope. Suddenly there’s a connection of a sort – Barley used to be a labourer at a farm where a climbing barn burnt down. Okay – it’s nearly twenty years later that he’s murdered, but then we hear he had some involvement at the time of the fire.’

  Skelgill begins to scoop up sweet mango chutney and sour lime pickle. He eats it swiftly before continuing with his monologue.

  ‘Then I remembered that Liz –’ (he hesitates for a second, as though using her first name is some small faux pas) ‘Mrs Williams – the little girl’s mother – said she had a scrapbook and photographs.’

  More poppadum-and-pickles goes the way of the previous.

  ‘It was a shot in the dark – but there it was – a kind of team photo taken in the barn, the kids and the adults – the quad bikes were lined up in front of the climbing wall – and all the folk sitting on them or clinging to ropes in various positions. From teenagers down to primary school age.’

  Now Skelgill systematically breaks the remaining pieces of poppadum into little pieces. He looks up and glances from one colleague to the other.

  ‘We have to trace all those kids.’

  There is a sombre moment as both sergeants nod gravely. After a respectable silence, DS Jones’s curiosity gets the better of her.

  ‘How did you manage to get the photograph, Guv?’

  ‘What?’ Skelgill scratches his head absently. ‘It must have been Monday night I went down to Wales.’

  There is the unasked question of how he was able to contact ‘Mrs Williams’. It appears Skelgill’s account will skirt around this detail.

  ‘She remembered Clifford Stewart and Walter Barley by their name f
irst names. Okay, so we’d have expected to find them in this photo – but there were two other adult males in the picture.’

  Skelgill signals to a waiter for more poppadums.

  ‘I drove back through the early hours – holding my breath all the way to Hinckley. I knocked-up that poor woman Linda Harris at the crack of dawn. But, sure enough – she identified Lee Harris – he’d have been about eighteen at the time. She showed me a picture of him not much younger. Then she even made me a bacon cob, Leyton.’

  DS Leyton grins in a relieved manner.

  ‘We thought you were a bit cream-crackered on Tuesday, Guv.’ He glances at DS Jones. ‘Either that or we were boring you something rotten.’

  ‘There’s never a dull moment when you’re around Leyton.’

  ‘I’ll take that as a compliment, Guv.’

  Skelgill produces a wry smile.

  ‘Then I took the photo to Hilda Seddon and she picked out Barry Seddon. So I’d got a connection between the victims – and that confirmed my suspicion that Clifford Stewart would be next – but I still had no real idea of what they’d been up to – why they were being targeted. Liz mentioned in passing that the ‘Walter’ character had a bad case of wandering hands, but that was as far as it went – and she just shrugged it off as par for the course back in those days.’

  Now Skelgill is pensive for a few moments. Perhaps without realising, he has lapsed back into the familiar in referring to Liz Williams by her first name. He looks up at DS Jones, who is watching him with interest.

  ‘Seems like she was one of the lucky ones. Jones – your team will need to pick this up with her.’

  DS Jones nods, and appears satisfied by this act of delegation.

  But DS Leyton is looking puzzled.

  ‘So, Guv – Clifford Stewart and Walter Barley, I get – like you say, they were based on the farm. But how did the other two become involved?’

  ‘Think about it, Leyton – for example, what piece of kit would you need to build and service a climbing wall?’

  DS Leyton holds up an index finger to indicate his sudden enlightenment.

  ‘You mean scaffolding, Guv?’

  ‘Exactly – and it doesn’t come cheap. Even full-time builders hire scaffolding – so Seddon must have had the contract for Knott Halloo Farm – would have made regular maintenance visits. Meanwhile Lee Harris is the local itinerant Honda expert – in the photo, all the quad bikes were Hondas. He must have drifted up north with the travelling fair, and thereafter stuck around plying his trade – probably had regular jobs at the adventure centre – service and repairs. Settled in the area after it went bust – as we know, was working down at Kendal most recently.’

  Skelgill drinks some more of his lager.

  ‘So that connects all of our four victims – if you count Clifford Stewart as a victim – to Knott Halloo Farm. Given it burnt down not long after, and they appear to have dispersed as a group, I figured it was a fair bet that it was someone from that era that was after them. Then you have to ask why? And why the rope? To be honest – I only got the answer to that when it was round my own neck. An eleventh-hour confession, you might say.’

  The two sergeants exchange a look of alarm, but DS Leyton tactfully steers the conversation away from this particular precipice.

  ‘Talk of confession – they ain’t singing yet, Guv – but we’re starting to fill in the gaps.’ He takes a sip of lager like a conference speaker realising his mouth is dry. ‘Their real names are Jason and Kaye Lamb – brother and sister – though both adopted – looks like the biological parents may have been travellers. They grew up mainly in the Penrith area. She’s apparently been working as an escort around Cumbria for quite a few years, under a string of aliases. He’s been living in Manchester – early indications are that he’s been involved in the transvestite scene down there, roughly the same line as his sister. We think we’ve located him on a couple of dodgy websites. She’s now thirty-one and he’s twenty-six – take that back to the time of the fire and she’d be thirteen and him just eight. There’s a record of them being taken into care not long after – followed by some troublesome fosterings. Pair of them kept running away and eventually when they were old enough they just disappeared off Social Services’ radar.’

  DS Jones is listening intently. She turns her glass of sparkling water so that the brand logo is facing away from her.

  ‘Guv, there’s an ironic parallel with Lee Harris. I’ve been speaking again with the liaison officer who contacted his real mother. She’s had another chat with her. She’s still a bit cagey, but reading between the lines, Lee Harris was being abused and he started mimicking the behaviour – targeting his little sister. That’s probably what drove the mother to get him out of the household. Might have saved the sister – but looks like it was too late as far as young Lee was concerned – his path was laid out. Start as a victim – then pass it on.

  DS Leyton turns to DS Jones. ‘What advice do you reckon they’ll get?’ He knows she has been focusing upon this aspect.

  ‘I spoke with the Crown Prosecutors this afternoon – they’re pretty certain the Lambs will plead guilty once we place the facts before their legal representatives. The circumstantial evidence is already piling up. We rushed through the forensic tests on the debris collected around the property – there’s traces of Barry Seddon’s DNA on a cigarette end, and of Walter Barley’s DNA on a piece of chewing gum. There’s also a patch of engine oil that exactly fits the composition of the oil stain beside Lee Harris’s flat. It’s like each of them left a calling card outside number thirty-seven. Then there’s a fibre match on all their clothing – from an unusual mohair blanket that was draped over a chair in the bedroom. We’re still doing tests on Jason Lamb’s car – but it looks like they moved the bodies as we’d thought, the next night after each murder, straight from the front door into the waiting car – it’s barely two yards – wrapped in PVC sheets like the one that was on the bed when we broke in.’

  She glances apprehensively at Skelgill, but his gaze remains steely.

  ‘So there’s already probably enough there, Guv – without even resorting to the confession they made to you.’

  ‘Unwitnessed.’

  The two sergeants appreciate Skelgill’s reticence when it comes to the finer details of how he unmasked the criminals. DS Leyton now chips in supportively.

  ‘And we’ve got the last piece of rope, Guv – that alone, it’s enough to hang ’em.’

  They all chuckle at this timely intervention, and sit back in their seats as their generous selection of starters arrives. Skelgill has overseen the ordering; he is especially partial to the establishment’s seekh kebab, and glances about anxiously until he sees that there are sufficient portions. He takes one such item, and slides the salad from the plate to make room for more important fare. Meanwhile DS Leyton continues the dialogue.

  ‘How long do we reckon they’ve been planning all this for?’

  Skelgill looks grim-faced as he considers this question.

  ‘Probably two decades, Leyton.’

  ‘Seriously, Guv?’

  But now Skelgill shrugs.

  ‘Maybe they’ll decide to tell us, Leyton.’

  DS Jones takes a small sip of mineral water.

  ‘I’ve been wondering if they were influenced by the wave of celebrity cases in the last couple of years. When you think about it, what they actually did wouldn’t take a lot of organisation. The crux was luring their victims to Ullswater Place.’

  DS Leyton is nodding, though he still appears doubtful. However, DS Jones continues.

  ‘The girl could easily have been seeing one or more of them as clients. If she’d surfaced with an alias – what, ten years after the events at the farm – they’d not recognise her. And, let’s face it, we know these guys all shared a common interest.’

  DS Leyton leans forward a little.

  ‘Do you think they were still acting as some kind of ring?’

  Skelgi
ll puts a second kebab on hold to interject.’

  ‘I reckon anything like that ended with the fire at Knott Halloo Farm – but probably there was a bond between them. And then there’s the gambling connection through Maurice Stewart. The numbers I got from his mobile suggest he was supplying Harris, Seddon and Barley with tips. So if they were sharing betting information – who knows what else?’

  DS Jones looks animated – she holds up a palm like an eager student.

  ‘The computers, Guv – I think there could be more to the thefts than covering their tracks.’

  ‘Aye?’

  ‘Once they got hold of them, they’d be able to impersonate their victims – access their address books and send emails or social messages pretending to be them. For instance, that old lady in Kendal – what if the ‘witches’ she saw were the Lambs stealing Lee Harris’s laptop on the Saturday night after they’d killed him? On the Sunday they could have contacted Barry Seddon, pretending to be Harris – recommending he try their services. They could have sent the same kind of messages to Walter Barley and Clifford Stewart. That might explain how they managed to get them to come in a cluster.’

  Skelgill is listening with interest, though he raises a hand in a cautionary manner.

  ‘Aye, well – hold your horses as far as Clifford Stewart is concerned – remember that was me.’ He frowns with disapproval as he discovers the samosa he is eating is one of the vegetarian batch that DS Jones requested. ‘But then again – I did tell them I was acting on a referral from old pals – and that helped to do the trick.’

  ‘So, you could be right, Emma.’ DS Leyton regards his colleague with admiration. ‘If only we can find where they’ve dumped all the phones and computer gear, we might get the answer. We’re trying to identify the owners of those lock-ups – before we start breaking in to ’em. That’s where my money is.’

  DS Jones grins modestly. She rises and passes dishes to her colleagues before serving herself a small helping of tandoori chicken accompanied by mixed salad. Skelgill’s plate – and to a lesser extent that of DS Leyton – looks like it holds an entire main course.