‘She wasn’t a teenager.’
‘No. But I was.
She caught Doherty’s questioning look and felt obliged to enlighten him.
‘I left home once or twice myself when I was a teenager. My mother was getting on my nerves, interfering in my life, wanting to choose my clothes for me. Can you blame me for taking off?’
He shook his head. ‘No.’
Honey smiled. Doherty knew her mother almost as well as she did. Gloria Cross was not the easiest person in the world to live with; her four husbands had found that out and moved on – or died.
Honey frowned. ‘I would hate it if Agnes never got to see her daughter again.’
‘I can understand that.’
‘C.A. Wright has a lot to answer for.’
‘If I’d met him I would probably have killed him myself.’
‘You would have done. Still, he has been murdered. I suppose we do have to find his killer, though quite honestly I’d prefer to pin a medal on his chest.’
‘Is that a mother talking or an hotelier?’
‘Both. I can’t help being reluctant to find his killer. Mr Wright was not a likeable man.’
‘I’m hearing you.’
She could count on Doherty to understand where she was coming from, and she certainly didn’t wish to appear unconcerned about C.A. Wright’s death. The case had to be solved even though she hadn’t liked the man, but the fact was they’d come so far and no further in this case. Fingers clenched above her head, she eyed a spider weaving a web in the corner of the room. On closer inspection she could see he wasn’t weaving at all but interring a fat fly in a mesh of silk. The fly was embalmed and totally immobile – fresh meat in the larder for a future feast. A bit like the bodies buried in Memory Meadow, except that in their case they would be devoured from within as well as without.
Honey shuddered at the thought of it.
Doherty noticed. ‘What’s up?’
‘I was thinking about the cardboard coffins and Ken Pollock saying that they were substandard.’
‘I can’t think that it matters seeing as it all ends up as mush.’
‘Yuck!’ Honey shuddered again. ‘I don’t mind worms. It’s maggots I can’t stand.’
Doherty was sitting bolt upright, hands resting on his thighs and looking at nothing in particular. Or at least, that was the way it seemed. Like a cat spotting a bird, he was very still and very alert, leaning forward at a forty-degree angle with the chair back. His hands were clasped together in front of him. His jaw was rigid.
‘Turn off the light,’ he ordered.
‘Wow,’ she said. ‘I’m your girl.’
The room was plunged into almost total darkness. There were few lights at this end of the village. Squares of light fell from the bedroom windows at the Poacher and on to the road. Beyond that was the churchyard and the new kid on the block next door to it – Memory Meadow.
Raising her hands, ready for action, she approached him on bare feet, aiming for his back, that broad muscular back that felt hard beneath her fingers.
Sighing she laid her hands on him. ‘Your shoulders feel as hard as iron. How would you like me to …?’
‘Shhh,’ he whispered. ‘Take a look over the road there. Can you see a light?’
His muscles tensed beneath her fingers.
Cursing whatever was happening over the road, she looked anyway, her fingers inching stealthily from neck to collarbone.
Normally there would be nothing but darkness beyond the lights of the hotel falling on the road. Black outlines of trees blended like spilt ink into the sky.
She was ready to go to bed and do more interesting things but Doherty’s tension could not be ignored.
Her fingers faltered just at the exact moment when her eyes narrowed. Something flickered at the far end of Memory Meadow, at what seemed to be the opposite end of the field to that part where Sean O’Brian had been buried.
‘Now who might you be?’ murmured Doherty, not to her but more or less to himself.
Honey was good at reading minds. Doherty’s was sometimes an open book, like now. His curiosity was aroused. All other kinds of arousal were put on the back burner until later.
She got up from the bed. ‘I’ll get our coats.’
‘They should have a torch in Reception,’ said Doherty as she handed him his coat. He pushed his arms into his sleeves as she held his coat for him. His eyes were still fixed on the flickering light in Memory Meadow.
‘No need. I’ve got one.’
A quick search in her coat pocket and her fingers touched what she was looking for. The bright blue of a clutch of LED bulbs burst into life.
‘Lindsey thought it might be useful for when I can’t find my car keys in the dark.’
‘Neat. Come on.’
‘Hey,’ she said, suddenly grabbing his arm. ‘You don’t think they’re grave robbers, do you?’
‘Like Burke and Hare?’
The Edinburgh grave robbers were the last thing on her mind. ‘Don’t be stupid. I was thinking of what Ken Pollock said about bodies being dug up and the coffins being recycled.’
Doherty rolled his eyes. ‘Give me strength.’
‘You don’t think so.’
‘He may have thought he saw bodies being dug up, but he was referring to the time before the field was turned into a cemetery. There were no bodies here then. He’s confused.’
Honey decided he was probably right. Ken Pollock was a bit of a nut. He’d rambled on about people digging the place up, but his recollections had been confused and in no particular chronological order, or at least, none that were instantly recognizable.
He’d espoused the fact that people were wandering around the field and digging things up in the middle of the night.
‘They had lamps,’ he’d said. ‘And electrical things that lift bodies from the ground. They’d hummed and sometimes made bleeping noises.’
They hadn’t had a clue what he was talking about, and an in-depth discussion hadn’t taken them anywhere except Memory Meadow, where cardboard coffins were being reused. It hadn’t occurred to him that people keen on recycling wouldn’t worry too much about that. The coffins were supplied as a matter of form. People were used to bodies being boxed up, not just wrapped in a shroud or bundled off in their best suit on the pallbearers’ shoulders.
Suitably attired and armed with nothing more offensive than a torch, they left their room and bolted down the stairs.
It was late and the tables in the restaurant had been set for breakfast. The night porter nodded at them as they headed for the door. ‘Midnight walk?’
Honey threw him a winning smile. ‘We’ve got our key. OK?’
He nodded, smiled and threw her a wicked wink. Midnight in the dark? Only two types of people went walking in the dark together. Passionate couples and murderous ones. He obviously thinks we’re the former, thought Honey. And he could just be right!
No main road ran through the centre of Much Maryleigh. There was no village green where winsome lassies and ladies lingered. The road was a loop that started at the main A46 two miles away, passing through the village and looping back out again on the other side.
The night was just cold enough to turn their breath to steam. The lights of the Poacher had been turned off, leaving just a glow from the reception area falling out on to the road. Once they were on the other side by the grassy verge, their footsteps fell into darkness; not a shred of moonlight to see by.
‘Keep to the wall and keep down,’ whispered Doherty.
Honey did as he said.
Feeling the rough edge of the wall she followed him, stopping where he did without them colliding.
Except for what must have been the light they had seen, currently at ground level, the darkness was unremitting. The only time they could see clearly was when a pair of headlights from the far-off road pierced between the towering leylandii that someone had planted when they were only eighteen inches high. They were now around eight
een feet and threw dark, dense shadows.
The sound of digging and falling earth came from the direction of the light and whoever was digging there.
Another flash of far-off headlights picked up the outline of the disused mausoleum on the churchyard side of the wall, the old tomb, as the waitress had told them. Honey had wandered into the churchyard on their last visit whilst Doherty had visited the pub’s washroom. She recalled a busted padlock, the heavy oak door, and the strange calmness inside. That was all there was inside, just calmness, no body or foul deed, though the place cried out for a dark and dirty deed to be done there.
She was about to poke Doherty in the back and mutter, ‘Hey. There’s that pretty tomb, the one Cathy used to meet her boyfriends in,’ but she didn’t get the chance. The sound of shovel digging into soil stopped abruptly. The night air was heavy with silence. She sensed someone was holding their breath; she certainly was.
‘Hey. Is somebody there?’
Whoever was there had sensed their presence. She didn’t recognize the voice. Unknown male, breathing heavily whilst involved in physical exertion; it could apply to anybody.
Doherty was part of the darkness and yet she knew he had tensed. Like her he was holding his breath.
She remained still, taking comfort that she was behind him – the very best place to be in case the somebody who spoke had a gun or leapt forward with fists flying. Just because they couldn’t see him didn’t mean he couldn’t see them. It depended on the light.
She reacted by making herself small, curling into not much more than a foetal ball. She reckoned Doherty was doing the selfsame thing. It was like having a solid wall in front of her and deeply comforting. Cowering down behind him she pressed snugly against his bum.
Whoever it was must have satisfied themselves that they were all alone. The sound of digging and falling earth recommenced.
She lifted her head and tried to peer through the darkness over Doherty’s shoulder. There was nothing to see though she had the sense that there were different shades of darkness as in one shade of darkness for solid, immovable things, and another kind of darkness for things that moved.
Curiosity made her less cautious. Balancing on bent knees, she eased forward, eyes narrowed, trying to see the impossible. In doing so she overbalanced. Her right hand landed in the dirt that was piled up against the wall. One hand wasn’t enough to support her. She landed on Doherty’s back, pressing down, knocking the breath out of him.
The digging stopped abruptly this time. There was the sound of something landing in the earth followed by the rustling of bushes. Then there was stillness.
Doherty got to his feet and moved forward. Honey followed.
‘Turn on your torch,’ he barked.
Honey obeyed. The stark light from the LED bulbs picked out a pile of earth and broken concrete. She flashed the light over the bushes. Beyond the bushes in the distance she could see lit windows of houses on the new estate, luxury houses built for the upwardly mobile. There was no moon but for one instant she thought she saw movement against the backdrop of lit-up new homes.
‘Can you see anyone?’ asked Doherty.
‘I’m not sure. It could have been just a shadow.’
‘Give me that.’
He took the torch from her, shining it down into the hole, picking out the dried-out brickwork of what had once been a cesspit.
Honey pointed out that there’d been a digger working here when they’d last visited.
‘Huh, huh.’
The words were meaningless, but the way Doherty said them she knew he was thinking on his feet. Something had struck him.
A chill wind was blowing through the laurel hedge. A warm bed and a hot man beckoned – though from the looks of it Doherty had forgotten about the four-poster bed.
It seemed appropriate for her to do some thinking too. Wrapping her coat more closely around herself, she thought things through. Nothing momentous seemed to hove into sight so she went for the only thing she could think of.
‘So why use a shovel now after using a digger?’
‘This looks like a disused cesspit. Bypassed once everything round here got connected to the main drains. It’s a dead cert that happened when the houses were built. We had reports of the digger being vandalized. You may also recall that it was fitted with a bucket with teeth on and for a very good reason. They were demolishing this. It probably fills up with water during rain. Somebody, possibly a child, could fall in and drown.’
Honey peered over Doherty’s shoulder. LED lights were bright but only had a narrow beam. The beam skittered over dark mounds of earth, broken concrete, and debris like some digitalized Tinkerbell.
‘There’s still a lot of stuff down there,’ Honey remarked, her eyes following the dancing beam to wherever Doherty directed it.
‘That’s because somebody has been filling it in.’ His tone of voice echoed around the cesspit walls.
She reminded herself that this wasn’t a grave. There could have been any number of reasons why someone wanted to scupper the efforts of the men ripping the pit apart.
‘Perhaps somebody thinks they’re not shifting themselves fast enough. Perhaps somebody has an almighty health and safety issue here.’
Or burying something. Burying a body. Burying loot. Burying …
No matter which way she looked at it the word burying was involved.
Doherty suddenly thrust the torch at her. ‘Hold this. I’m going in.’
Loose earth and more rubble tumbled into the square of blackness with Doherty’s legs and then his whole body.
She attempted to pass him the torch.
‘No. You hold that. Pass me the shovel then hold the torch steady on where I start digging.’
He focused on the narrow beam of blue light. Muck and rubble sucked at his ankles.
She sensed his excitement. His need to know was infectious. She felt it herself. Eyes wide and unblinking, she got on to her knees, rested one hand on the edge of the pit, the other holding the torch.
The shovel made a tearing sound as he dug into the mix of rubble, muck, and effluent.
Honey wrinkled her nose. ‘It doesn’t smell too sweet.’
Totally absorbed in what he was doing, he didn’t answer, which wasn’t entirely unexpected. That was how he was once he was on the scent of something interesting – even when it didn’t smell too sweet.
A few shovelfuls of earth were thrown on to the opposite side to where Honey was kneeling. A few shovelfuls more … Suddenly he stopped and reached for the torch.
‘Give me that.’
He bent over with his back towards her, the torch between his body and the ground.
Honey was immediately plunged into darkness.
The wind was turning colder and it was beginning to rain.
‘What is it? What have you found?’
He hadn’t needed to tell her that he was looking for something. Like him her mind had been turning over the reasons why somebody would be filling in a hole that was being demolished. Somebody was afraid of what might be found.
Doherty turned round, flung the shovel out of the pit, and reached for her hand.
‘Give me a tug.’
With a bit of effort from him she did manage to pull him out.
He was brushing something off in his hand and had given her the torch. Even before she saw it clearly, she knew what he was holding was his phone; knew he was reporting a serious incident.
‘We’ve found Cathy Morden, haven’t we?’
His face was in semi-darkness when he nodded, his features bluish and demonic by the stark light of the torch and the phone.
‘Wait and see.’
Chapter Twenty-two
Ned Shaw was sitting with his shoulders hunched and his hands clenched. His head was bowed and he wasn’t saying anything except that he wanted his lawyer.
Resting his clasped hands on the desktop in front of him, Doherty leaned forward. The preliminaries had already been gone t
hrough. Now they were down to the nitty-gritty.
‘Cathy Morden was employed as a waitress at the Poacher. You must have seen her there.’
Ned stayed stock-still and said nothing.
Doherty focused on the thinning hair of Ned’s bowed head. The hair was sandy coloured. In his estimation, fair men tended to lose their hair more quickly than dark-haired men. Ned was wearing a dark green T-shirt. His arms were brown from working outdoors and covered with a fine layer of corn-coloured hair.
‘How often did you drink at the Poacher?’
Again, no response.
‘Twice a week? Three times?’
A nerve flickered close to Ned Shaw’s hairline. His whole body tensed. Doherty interpreted the warning signs, the muscles hardening like springs, the fists clenching more forcibly.
Doherty prepared himself in much the same manner, half expecting Shaw to throw a punch or even pick up the chair he was sitting on and throw that. The man had a violent history. He’d lash out at anyone and with anything.
Doherty could almost taste the atmosphere in the interview room. It was like cordite or gunpowder: one spark and everything would explode. He didn’t want things to go there. He wanted cooperation. He wanted closure on this and he wanted a calm road to the ultimate goal.
There were two things he could do: keep Shaw in a cell overnight and try again tomorrow – in effect try to wear him down until he said something – preferably confess to the murder. Or he could go with the softly-softly approach – man-to-man and gently does it.
Deciding he didn’t have the time to pussyfoot about, he decided to plump for the second option. There was a chance he could get duffed up in the process, but he had a panic button. He decided to go with it.
He nodded at the uniformed constable. ‘Get us two cups of coffee, will you? No sugar for me. Sugar for you, Ned?’
Ned raised his eyes but didn’t say anything.
Doherty leaned back in his chair. ‘I think Mr Shaw would like sugar.’
Realizing what Doherty was asking him to do, the constable stalled, the young face a little stiff. Doherty was doing the unconventional.
Wicked Words: A Honey Driver Murder Mystery (Honey Driver Mysteries) Page 21