Bruce Beckham
__________
Murder in the Woods
A detective novel
LUCiUS
Text copyright 2017 Bruce Beckham
All rights reserved. Bruce Beckham asserts his right always to be identified as the author of this work. No part may be copied or transmitted without written permission from the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events and locales is entirely coincidental.
Kindle edition first published by Lucius 2017
Paperback edition first published by Lucius 2017
For more details and Rights enquiries contact:
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EDITOR’S NOTE
Murder in the Woods is a stand-alone crime mystery, the eighth in the series ‘Detective Inspector Skelgill Investigates’. It is set largely in the English Lake District, a National Park of 885 square miles that lies in the rugged northern county of Cumbria, and in particular to the west of Derwentwater, around an imagined wooded knoll not unlike Swinside, in the vicinity of Catbells.
BY THE SAME AUTHOR
Murder in Adland
Murder in School
Murder on the Edge
Murder on the Lake
Murder by Magic
Murder in the Mind
Murder at the Wake
Murder in the Woods
Murder at the Flood
(Above: Detective Inspector Skelgill Investigates)
Murder, Mystery Collection
The Dune
The Sexopaths
Contents
Glossary – Cumbrian dialect
1. Harterhow – Monday
2. June Collins
3. Skelgill’s Office – Tuesday
4. Harterhow
5. Coot & Fox
6. Press Conference I – Wednesday
7. Marvin Morgan
8. Dog Walkers – Thursday
9. Forensic Findings
10 CrimeTime – Monday
11. Always Fishing
12. Keswick Coffee Shop – Tuesday
13. Liverpool – Thursday
14. Night Owl – Friday
15. How Cottage – Saturday
16. Press Conference II – Monday
17. ‘Rose’ – Tuesday
18. Forrester – Wednesday
19. Threlkeld – Thursday
20. Evidence Mounts
21. Harterhow
22. Police HQ – Friday
Next in the series
Glossary – Cumbrian dialect
Some of the local words used in ‘Murder in the Woods’ are as follows:
Backend – autumn
Bletherin’ – talking nonsense
Brocken – broken
Brossen – full up (eaten too much)
Chessin – chasing
Clap – stroke a pet (mainly Scots)
Deek – look, peek
Divvent – don’t
Flaiten, flaite – frightened
Foily – smelly
Girt – great
How – rounded hill
Ken – know (also Scots)
Marra – mate (friend)
Ower – over
Reet – right
Yat – gate
Yon – that
Yowes – ewes
1. HARTERHOW – Monday
‘Guv – was that a scream?’
Skelgill, not a man known for sunbathing, lies unmoving; he might almost be asleep. However, the stalk of grass that he grips between compressed lips twitches like a fisherman’s float, indicative of some sub-surface activity. DS Jones rolls over and achieves a sitting position with considerable ease, wrapping her arms round her knees. Now she surveys the scene; they face south, and in descending order is the sun in its dome of azure sky, a bleached mountainous horizon (Skelgill would tell her the names of the tops, such as High Raise, Pike O’Stickle and Glaramara) blending into green foothills and dales, the shimmering plane that is Derwentwater, and finally a verdant canopy of oak that froths up from the lake. In fact there are two more features, between them and the woodland fringe a steep downslope to which cling patches of fresh green bracken and mauve ranks of straining foxglove and, closest of all, Cleopatra, Skelgill’s Staffie-Boxer cross, who sits snapping at flies. Suddenly, and simultaneously, the dog and the detective sergeant turn their heads a few degrees; they concur on the bearing.
‘There it is again.’ Skelgill still does not respond, but the grass stem stops moving. A note of anxiety occupies DS Jones’s voice. ‘Guv – wake up! It sounds like someone’s in trouble!’
‘I’m not asleep.’
If he were he is now alert and on his feet. Indeed he pitches forward and sets off downhill at a canter, spitting the straw. Without looking back he barks his orders.
‘Put in a call – might be quicker across the lake. Watch the dog.’
DS Jones shades her eyes with a salute. Skelgill’s loping stride seems precarious, like a skier who leans into a steep piste and might overbalance. Brown butterflies rise and flutter in his wake amidst puffs of pale yellow pollen. She kneels and slips her mobile from the hip pocket of her jeans. It takes her twenty seconds to make the call. Now she considers Cleopatra.
‘Sit. Good girl. Stay.’
The dog is vaguely bemused, but does as bidden. DS Jones casts it a stern look and sprints after her superior. In her natural athleticism she exhibits more grace than Skelgill but he is in his natural element. Sure-footed he plunges into the woodland, and his beeline does not deviate; he hurdles decaying trunks and ducks leafy hazel switches and sprays of sweet-and-sickly scented honeysuckle. His progress is unaffected by the lattice of fallen branches and twigs that booby-traps the forest floor. The yell is repetitive, in frequency and timbre; it could be a homing beacon.
DS Jones is forced to skirt around Skelgill’s course; in the heavy air beneath the canopy the cry is resonant, and she reaches its point of origin only in time to see him slap a dark-haired woman across the cheek. It is a successful manoeuvre and the penetrating squeal ceases. He hears the crackling approach of his colleague and makes a face that means she should take over. DS Jones grasps the woman by the shoulders and turns her 180 degrees, intending to shepherd her away, but she pauses for a moment to watch Skelgill.
Close by a black-and-tan Lakeland Terrier is worrying some object that it has partially uncovered. Leaf litter sprays about. There is the moist mouldy smell of mulch. Skelgill experiments with a pishing sound; then clicks of the tongue; then a whistle – but the dog is preoccupied with its excavation. He steps over and left-handed hauls it off its feet by the scruff. There is the unmistakeable musky waft of a stinkhorn that evokes rotten carrion and lures blowflies to the sticky spore-rich gleba – except gleaming from the black earth are two rows of bright human teeth.
*
‘Dang!’
‘What is it, Guv?’
Skelgill does not reply, but flaps a hand in the direction of his dozing dog. DS Jones looks puzzled, but then she understands as Skelgill stoops to pick up a crackling cellophane wrapper from the tartan rug. For an hour Cleopatra has diligently guarded their hastily abandoned picnic site, but at some point, overcome by instinct, she ate the uncooked Cumberland sausages. DS Jones is unable to suppress a giggle. And Skelgill is forced to simper resignedly; it is not a trial of temptation he could have survived, either. Out of sight beneath them on the lower slope of Harterhow the woodland ‘grave’ is now taped off, a sentry posted in the shape of young PC Dodd, the scene of crime team being hastily assembled and soon to be de
spatched. The woman who raised the alarm has been coaxed away for a medical check-up; DS Jones has the lady’s dog on a length of blue baler twine produced by Skelgill.
‘What about this one, Guv – hadn’t we better give it a drink of water?’
Skelgill regards the handsome animal like he is noticing it for the first time. He tilts his head to ascertain its gender.
‘Has he got a name?’
DS Jones bends easily at the waist and then rather gingerly she feels beneath the creature’s chin and rotates its collar. She chuckles for a second time.
‘It says “Morse”, Guv.’
Skelgill raises an eyebrow. He straddles the cornucopia of camping gear that spills from his toppled ex-army rucksack. He rummages and extracts a clear plastic bottle, but it is empty. He jerks his Kelly kettle from its base; it sloshes encouragingly. He casts about for a suitable receptacle, but in vain – and so squats beside the dog and pours from the spout into a cupped palm, as is his custom for his own dog. The terrier seems to bear no hard feelings, and is quick on the uptake.
‘What kind is he, Guv?’
‘A Lakeland – they’re bred to follow the hunt – tough little devils, run all day long.’
Skelgill scowls at the Bullboxer; her obvious talents lie in other directions.
‘Could that be why he was digging, Guv – maybe thought it was a dead fox?’
Skelgill screws up his features, recalling the hot sharp reek of decay.
‘It were foily, alright – happen if you’re a dog it must be like Friday night passing the chippy – irresistible.’
DS Jones makes a face of qualified disapproval.
‘There was long hair, Guv – think it’s a female?’
‘Aye, I shouldn’t be surprised. They usually are, eh?’
He gazes up as though he expects her to recite a ready statistic that bears out this supposition; his expression hints at concern, and some regret that this inequality should prevail. They both know, however, that any speculation at this moment is futile – until big questions like cause and time of death are answered by forensic analysis.
DS Jones nods pensively. She watches in silence as Skelgill performs the improbable trick of feeding all the gear back into the rucksack. But as they begin to pick their way diagonally down and across the fellside clearing, questions probe at her consciousness, and she speaks her thoughts.
‘If someone has hidden the body – it’s a long way from the gate. The lake would be nearer.’
Skelgill clicks his fingers to make sure his dog, unleashed, falls in behind them. He turns his head to consider Derwentwater. The schools have not yet broken up for summer; most trippers are silver surfers – not literally, of course, but those affluent empty-nesters and still-fit retired folks for whom the Lake District’s combination of stunning natural beauty and network of cosy inns and coffee shops makes it a child-free magnet during term times. As such there are not so many rowboats on the water, and no flailing oars or joyful shrieks and splashes, but Skelgill counts four packed pleasure cruisers plying their trade, sedately circling the lake, both clockwise and anticlockwise, a hop-on hop-off service that calls at seven jetties, the nearest half a mile hence, at Brandelhow. Not that he has in mind this mode of transport; indeed he inserts a caveat into DS Jones’s hypothesis.
‘Aye – but you’re talking a good three-hundred-foot height gain from the shore. There’s a six-foot wall, and no easy footpath.’
DS Jones has thought of this.
‘What if it were two people, Guv?’
‘What if she walked there herself, Jones?’
She grins; they have come full circle. Patience is called for.
‘How about Morse, Guv?’
‘I’ll take him round later – once the medic’s finished with his owner.’ He glances somewhat sheepishly at his colleague. ‘I know the woman.’
*
Marvin Morgan puts down his binoculars. The young couple and their dogs have disappeared from sight – rather oddly, he thinks, for there is no path that way, albeit they are heading in the right direction for the dead-end of the track where a handful of cars can be squeezed onto the verge. He has seen the man before – must be late thirties, rough looking, hard-faced, could almost be a gypsy with that fighting dog – it’s probably a pit bull.
His girlfriend was a good bit younger. Attractive – nice face and a slim figure – and curvy, you don’t often see that. Marvin’s pulse had risen. He’d been reclining in his usual spot when they first came into the clearing two hours ago. The man had spread out a rug, and they’d cooked sausages – the smell had made his mouth water but he’d already eaten his own sandwiches. Then they lay down – but there was bracken and gorse between them and his ‘hide’ under the conifers and he caught only the occasional glimpse of a bobbing head. He’d thought about creeping around the edge of the clearing for a better angle. But that would have meant leaving his own dog tied up – and he might bark and give the game away.
Anyway – then the screaming had started and the man had dashed off, followed by the girl. He’d considered a casual inspection of their picnic spot – until he realised the pit bull might be lurking. He’d had to be patient – it was the best part of an hour before they returned – in fact he’d probably nodded off when he heard their voices. They’d straight away begun to pack up – he got a better view of the girl, and a photo of her bending over in her tight jeans. He’d wondered if the cries for help had interrupted them having sex – it was a good twenty seconds before the man had risen, and didn’t he hitch up his trousers? But they weren’t exactly intimate when they got back. Maybe they’re married? And the girl had another dog on a rope – that must have been something to do with the screaming. What was that all about?
Marvin Morgan’s bristly monobrow is creased at the centre – an unconscious contortion that only appears when he is significantly troubled. Broodingly, he packs away his own gear – sit-mat, thermos flask and lunchbox, notebook and pencil, camera, binoculars, paperback novel – and unhooks his dog’s lead from the little branch cut off for the purpose. He begins to trudge upwards into the pinewoods, the opposite way from the young couple. Then he stops in his tracks and listens – there is a distant siren. The crease deepens.
2. JUNE COLLINS
‘Sorry – I haven’t yelled like that since I was a little girl – I didn’t know I still had it in me.’
Skelgill reaches to clap the Lakeland Terrier, which seems disinclined to leave his side. Then he leans his elbows upon the kitchen table and watches the woman. She has her back to him as she disposes of teabags at the sink. The belt of her pink towelling dressing gown is tied tight about her waist, revealing a trim if thin figure, and drawing the short hem perhaps higher than she realises. Her black hair, still damp and slick and brushed straight between her shoulder blades, looks longer than before. Ordinarily he would have offered to come back at a more suitable time – but the woman stepped aside and the dog virtually pulled him through the front door. Now she turns and sets down two china mugs and takes the seat closest to him.
‘Happen it did the trick. Sorry about the slap.’
She lifts a palm to her cheek – as if only now she remembers what took place. Her nails are carefully manicured, quite long – possibly artificial – and varnished in a deep ochre. And though he must have interrupted her bath or shower, he does not recall the mascara or lipstick from their encounter in the woods. There is something Mediterranean in her appearance, with full brows and a nose that is a shade too large for the surrounding proportions of her face; her eyes, however, are pools of sparkling kingfisher blue, they seem illuminated amidst her tanned complexion. She fixes them upon him; then she folds her hands reverently upon her lap and her expression is one of wide-eyed admiration. Her voice is silky, and her accent a curious amalgam of north west England and the mid-Atlantic.
‘I never guessed you were a detective.’
Skelgill is half-expecting this observation, if not the m
anner in which it is delivered. Nearby is Crow Park, a Keswick lakeside attraction popular with local dog owners and professional dog walkers. His recent taking custody of Cleopatra – in the opinion of most observers a spectacularly out-of-character lifestyle decision – has seen him become acquainted with this woman (among others), albeit on purely nodding terms.
‘I never guessed you were a landlady.’
Skelgill intends this as a compliment, but she lowers her eyes and has him scuttling for the cover of a banality.
‘Aye – they’re a great leveller, dogs. You meet all these folk out there – pass the time of day with them – but you never know if they’re a High Court judge or a murderer on the run – or one and the same.’
The woman looks up with alarm, her eyes shining.
‘And now there is a murderer?’
That Skelgill has inadvertently implied a main line of inquiry causes him to backtrack. He takes a drink of tea – it allows him to compose a reply.
‘Let’s not get ahead of ourselves – at this stage there’s no saying what happened. It could have been a suicide, an accident – someone taken ill.’
‘So the skull – it was human?’
Skelgill grimaces and nods reluctantly.
‘Aye – an adult, if it’s any consolation – but we’d appreciate your confidence for the time being.’
He watches as she intertwines her slender fingers around her mug. Hers do not look like the washed-out hands of a landlady. Nor indeed does she exhibit the intense demeanour of the profession; she seems far too easy going, too glamorous, too young, even – though he knows her age to be 43 from among the basic contact details she has supplied to his colleagues. She affects a shudder and dips her head.
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