Murder in the Woods (Detective Inspector Skelgill Investigates Book 8)

by Bruce Beckham

  ‘Rose.’

  It is strange, but in the split second that DS Jones hesitates, Skelgill supplies a name. For a few moments his colleagues look at him open-mouthed – and he realises he must be more forthcoming to correct the false impression that he knows who she is. He rests an elbow on the arm of the sofa and leans sideways to cradle his brow in a gesture of discontent. His other hand he flicks dismissively, but perhaps in the approximate direction of Harterhow.

  ‘When I was over there – last Thursday – I was checking about – and someone had laid roses on the grave.’

  DS Leyton is wide-eyed.

  ‘What – like a bunch, Guv?’

  Skelgill shakes his head.

  ‘Wild roses – a stem snapped off a bush. But there’s none growing nearby – you get them in the lane, trailing over the walls.’

  ‘So they were brought for a purpose?’

  Skelgill shrugs.

  ‘You’d be hard pressed to find the spot – the forensic team had raked everything back into place.’

  DS Jones now chips in.

  ‘Could it have been one of them, Guv?’

  ‘Aye – though no one’s admitting to it.’ Skelgill has evidently asked the question.

  ‘It is the fashion these days – for people to leave tributes – even though they don’t necessarily know the person.’

  Skelgill nods.

  ‘Something and nothing, eh?’

  His response might be sarcastic – but in fact his tone is mild and suggests that is exactly what he thinks. After all, they had announced the finding of human remains on Harterhow at the press conference on the Wednesday – and had spoken to Messrs Coot and Fox the day before that; ample time for someone to decide to pay a visit to the locality.

  ‘Rose, then, Guv.’

  It is DS Leyton that breaks the contemplative silence and brings them back to earth. His manner implies they have reached an unspoken consensus; and somehow in taking this one small step, Rose – hitherto a collection of decaying bones and hair, and more resilient dental work and jewellery – assumes a tangible persona. Then there is the prospect that they might see her ‘in the flesh’. Skelgill turns to DS Jones.

  ‘Aye – give it a shot.’

  DS Jones is quick to rein in her obvious delight.

  ‘Great, Guv – I’ve got the contacts – I’ll get it moving straight away. I understand it can be done quite quickly.’

  DS Leyton still appears a little dumbfounded, and takes a gulp of coffee as if it were a medicinal brandy. He lowers his mug to display a nose tipped with foam.

  ‘Brainwave, Emma.’

  DS Jones smiles; again with a degree of diffidence. Not being one to steal another’s thunder she finds herself on the horns of a dilemma, for the “brainwave” – as her colleague generously puts it – in fact has its origins in the head of the precocious local reporter, Kendall Minto; it is the “clever idea” that he had expressly wished to “bounce off” her and in part, at least, explained his enthusiastic pursuit. Moreover, by nature candid, DS Jones finds this situation doubly taxing: if Skelgill were to know its source he would surely veto the plan.

  Skelgill however seems to have entered a brown study. He has drained his mug and stares into it as if some intrigue is painted in the ebbing tide marks. Of course, while he has his team working in a methodical, linear fashion, assembling the facts and drawing logical conclusions, his own mind does nothing of the sort. Indeed, his mind is not what matters – it is what lies beneath – and in a modest way he can be likened to the great poet A.E. Housman, whose stanzas famously came to him while he took his daily walks (fortified by the odd pint of ale), and who was most irritated when he arrived home to find a poem incomplete, requiring him to finish it himself! By analogy, Skelgill is still mid-walk. Plainly he feels rumblings, informed by his experience to date, and confirmed by an irrational resistance to certain unarguable facts.

  He starts – and looks up – his subordinates await his pronouncement.

  ‘Leyton – have a deek – see if they’ve got any of those Eccles cakes left.’

  13. LIVERPOOL – Thursday

  ‘That’s three full days since you were on the telly, Guv.’

  ‘Happen she’s not British or Irish, Leyton.’ Skelgill groans and shifts position; he has the passenger seat of DS Leyton’s car tilted back, so that he is half reclining. He stretches his legs as much as the limited space in the footwell will allow. ‘Is this seat stuck, or what?’

  DS Leyton glances briefly away from the road ahead.

  ‘I reckon you’ve got it at the max, Guv – you must have long legs.’

  ‘Aye, they run in the family, Leyton.’

  ‘Hah – I thought that was noses, Guv!’

  ‘Very funny.’

  On this occasion Skelgill appears to take his sergeant’s rejoinder with a pinch of salt, indeed his spirits are high by recent standards, no doubt buoyed by the hearty breakfast consumed prior to departure from their rendezvous at Tebay services. Thence, they have travelled deep into Lancashire, and will shortly take the M58, the dedicated motorway that serves the port city of Liverpool from the north. While DS Leyton flaunts the terrestrial speed limit, Skelgill seems to have resigned himself to accept that this case will move at its own pace, and that there are few metaphorical stops he can pull out in order to force its pace. Moreover – while he may be frustrated – it seems the powers that be are satisfied with the progress of the investigation, for the ‘Iron Lady’ has largely refrained from her habitual sabre rattling. Several promising leads have emanated from CrimeTime. DS Jones, her star in the ascendant, at this very minute is overseeing the facial reconstruction, an initiative for which no little praise has been heaped upon her from above. And Skelgill and DS Leyton hurtle like a dusty comet towards Liverpool because Spencer Fazakerley has been identified.

  *

  ‘Look, Guv – there’s Aintree – that’s where they hold the Grand National – most famous horserace in the world. Rule Britannia!’

  Skelgill has been haphazardly reading his weekly fishing newspaper, trying to piece together the stories partly consumed by his dog. He puts it aside and glances up. DS Leyton sounds inordinately proud of the great equine institution, which appears somewhat underwhelming to Skelgill, given its fame.

  ‘It looks deserted.’

  ‘It’s the flat season, Guv – Aintree’s a National Hunt course – hurdles and steeplechases.’

  Skelgill stares pensively.

  ‘What’s the difference – between hurdles and steeplechases, I mean?’

  DS Leyton is unaccustomed to such a reversal of roles – normally it is Skelgill that pontificates upon the merits of some obscure river they have stopped to inspect, or replays the nagging conundrum of how can sea trout and brown trout possibly be the same species?

  ‘Well, Guv – in a hurdles race the jumps are only three foot six – they’re flexible brushwood panels, and the horses can more or less knock them back – you don’t get many fallers. Good hurdlers jump low to maintain their speed. In a steeplechase the jumps are actual wooden fences dressed to look like flippin’ great hedges, some with ditches or water – Becher’s Brook’s got a seven-foot drop. It’s like in the old days when they’d gallop from one village church to another and meet natural obstacles.’

  Skelgill is no aficionado of the turf, but this notion appeals to him.

  ‘So a steeplechase is the original race, cross-country?’

  ‘I suppose so, Guv – but they’ve been using courses for a good old time – the National’s coming up for two hundred years.’

  Skelgill glowers as they pass a mammoth billboard advertising an online gambling sponsor.

  ‘Do you bet on it?’

  ‘Nah – it’s a mug’s game – the National’s a lottery, Guv. Hah!’ He notices his own pun. ‘It’s a handicap, for starters – plus there’s forty runners and it’s four miles long – twice your standard distance – and the going can be brutal. How do you
find any form in that?’

  Skelgill has no idea – really no idea what DS Leyton is talking about – but there is a paradox that perhaps intrigues him – there will be a winner, and it will win for a reason. But DS Leyton is also musing along similar lines.

  ‘Except for Red Rum, of course, Guv. Never been a horse like it. Three times champion, runner-up the other twice it ran. My old Nan used to tell of how she dreamt the Thames was flooding the Isle of Dogs – and it was streaming all clay-coloured down the walls of her bedroom – except it turned into red wine. Next day was Red Rum’s first outing in the National. She wagered a pony at twenties and won a monkey!’

  Skelgill makes an exasperated gasp.

  ‘Whatever language you’re speaking, Leyton – I still reckon with the right information you could pick the winner.’

  Now DS Leyton purses his fleshy lips.

  ‘Thing is, Guv – what you can’t account for is the interference from all the other horses – on paper your selection might be a shoo-in – then some novice brings it down at the first.’

  Skelgill nods – he is contemplating the analogy – that there is an unblemished truth which underlies the story of ‘Rose’ – but the more widely they investigate the greater the risk that it becomes battered and bruised by overlapping and competing realities – dangerous loose horses, one of which may be ‘Spencer Fazakerley’.

  *

  ‘So you can confirm it’s him?’

  ‘Deffo, Inspector.’

  ‘And his full name is Derek Emlyn Alun Dudley?’

  ‘He was named after Liverpool footballers, like.’

  ‘And you’re Mrs Teresa Dudley – you’re married?’

  The woman nods.

  ‘Coming up fourteen years.’

  She indicates a framed wedding portrait upon the mantelpiece – she is short, barely five feet, and there is no mistaking the tall, gaunt groom, ‘Spencer Fazakerley’ – properly Derek Dudley – towering alongside her with arms folded like some dour Dickensian funeral director. He is not greatly altered from their more recent photograph. For her part, she has acquired bleached blonde hair and a few pounds, but she has regular, attractive features and pale blue eyes that give as good as they get to her interrogators. The sitting room is unexceptional, and representative of another twenty million like it across England; a large TV set the focal point, and various black boxes and channel changers and wireless controllers tidied beneath. Their own technology has guided the detectives to the suburban semi in Spencer Avenue, to where the local police bearing June Collins’ snapshot had been directed by neighbours, for the identification to be confirmed by Teresa Dudley herself. Skelgill gulps appreciatively at his mug of sweet milky tea. DS Leyton sits beside him on the sofa, pencil and notebook poised. An artificial lavender fragrance hangs in the air, of the ‘scatter and vacuum’ variety.

  ‘When did you last see him?’

  ‘Last October – towards the end of the month – the boys were gutted on Bonfire Night when he never got back.’

  With her strong Scouse accent she pronounces the word “back” as the Scots do “loch”, ending with a lenited “kh” sound that infiltrates many consonants on Merseyside, and which to the uninitiated might be perceived as a harbinger of imminent expectoration.

  ‘You haven’t reported him missing.’

  ‘I have.’ She sounds surprised – and not at all pressured by the implied accusation. ‘I went to the local bizzies not long after, like.’

  That she uses the Liverpool slang for the police seems to add credence to her assertion, and both Skelgill and DS Leyton are rocked back on their heels, to the extent that is possible whilst occupying a sofa. They stare at one another – DS Leyton bewildered, Skelgill looking for someone to blame. Then – duh! – it dawns on them simultaneously: their inquiries have proved fruitless because they have been seeking a non-existent ‘Spencer Fazakerley’ – the man she reported missing is Derek Dudley. Skelgill turns back to the woman.

  ‘He’s a lo–’ Skelgill is halfway through the word “lorry” (or perhaps “long-distance”) when a small aftershock strikes him. He begins again. ‘What does he do for a living?’

  ‘He’s a builder.’ Again, Teresa Dudley appears perplexed, that the police do not know this.

  ‘A builder.’ Skelgill buys himself a few moments by repeating her answer. A little voice in his head is chanting the words “red herring” and he has to fight a rising anger – directed at his organisation, it must be noted. He contrives to produce a follow-up question, though hardly an incisive one.

  ‘What kind of builder?’

  ‘Small jobs – loft extensions, conservatories, walls knocked through, like.’

  The woman seems unruffled.

  ‘What – a bricklayer, or something?’

  ‘No.’ She has the Scouse way of pronouncing the “o” as the word owe, the sound contained in her nose. ‘He supervises the work – books the subbies – brickie, chippy, spark. Derek always says, why buy a dog and bark yourself?’

  Skelgill is regarding her thoughtfully. She knows the building trade vernacular for the various sub-contractors. And she refers to Derek Dudley in the present tense.

  ‘You mean like a project manager?’

  The woman nods.

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Does he have an office?’

  ‘Upstairs, in the box room, like.’

  Now Skelgill nods.

  ‘Perhaps you wouldn’t mind if we had a look before we go?’

  ‘Be my guest.’

  Skelgill regards her closely. She’s tough – then that’s how they make them round here, you wouldn’t want to pick a fight with a Liverpudlian – especially not a working-class woman with truth on her side, as one major police force knows to its cost. Her skin is smooth, but there are worry lines at the corners of her eyes; the pale blue irises are cold, but he sees the indomitable fire burning within. He has reached a point where diplomacy is called for, and this is not his strong suit.

  ‘Madam –’

  ‘Teresa.’ She is quick to interject. Skelgill complies.

  ‘Teresa – I’d be right in saying that Derek worked away on a regular basis?’

  ‘Every week – most of his jobs are in the Lake District – people getting their holiday homes and guesthouses modernised and extended, like.’

  ‘Where would he stay?’

  ‘B&B – it’s cheaper than a hotel – and there’s usually one nearby – sometimes it’s the same place as the job.’

  ‘He told you this?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘You didn’t make his reservations?’

  She shakes her head. There is a hardening of the muscles of her jaw, and Skelgill detects that his line of travel presents her with some discomfort.

  ‘He takes care of his own arrangements – I’ve got my hands full with my work – and looking after the lads.’

  Skelgill glances distractedly at the computer games console and controls.

  ‘What ages are they?’

  ‘Ten and twelve.’

  ‘You work part-time?’

  ‘Iceland.’

  It is a moment before he remembers Iceland is a store chain, frozen food, he guesses. She sees his hesitation and provides what might be an answer to his puzzlement.

  ‘Checkout operator. I can fit the shifts around the lads’ school times. I’m on ten till two today.’

  She glances at her wristwatch, but then continues to look at it for longer than is necessary. Perhaps it was a present from Derek Dudley.

  ‘We needn’t keep you – now we know where to find you.’

  The woman nods. Her lips are compressed as if she is bracing herself, perhaps to avoid becoming emotional – or perhaps just not to speak. Skelgill is conscious that he has allowed the conversation to drift laterally, when he ought to be forging ahead, asking whether she thinks her husband might have been having a liaison of a romantic nature. Yet neither has she posed what seems to hi
m the glaring question, why are Cumbria police investigating, and not the Merseyside force? It is possible of course that she has no inkling of what Derek Dudley was up to – that she has not questioned why he was digging in country garden filled with delphiniums. Perhaps she assumed he was working at a property he was renovating. And maybe everything seems straightforward – she has reported her husband missing, here are the police on the case. Skelgill doggedly skirts around the central issue.

  ‘And you’re managing – money-wise?’

  She lifts a hand to her throat and fingers the gold St Christopher she wears on a short chain. She has told them she is 43 – the same age as June Collins, as it happens – but Skelgill cannot help making the comparison; these hands have seen a harsher life, of mops and buckets and budget bleach, and none of your pampering creams and lotions and potions.

  ‘We get by.’ She holds his gaze with a steely determination. Then she adds a rider, as if to correct any misapprehension she may have caused. ‘You could always use more, like – the lads grow out of their clobber while your back’s turned.’

  Skelgill nods and makes a face that might vaguely convey his understanding. He reverts to the practical matter of her husband’s disappearance.

  ‘You’ve not heard from Derek – not even a text message – since he last went away to work in October?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘And that’s out of character?’

  ‘He didn’t get in touch while he was gone – but that was rarely more than a week, like.’

  ‘To be out of contact for a longer period – is that something he’s done before?’

  She shakes her head.

  ‘Never. He always comes home.’

  *

  ‘This tunnel’s a relief, Guv – you know me and boats.’

  ‘Come again, Leyton?’

  ‘I’ve been bricking it all morning, Guv – thinking we’d be taking the Mersey ferry – The Liver Birds – Gerry & The Pacemakers – an’ all that?’

  Skelgill appears baffled – despite that his thoughts have been occupied by a related, if somewhat esoteric, aspect of their subterranean surroundings – the notion of the many fish that must swim above them, and the challenges of approaching angling from below, rather than the more conventional approach, from above.