Scaring Crows

by Priscilla Masters

  And if she had not imagined it what vague hostility lay behind it?

  She glanced again at the thin man with his hard, boney face and then turned her attention back to Shackleton, knowing one thing was for sure. Shackleton would provide no more answers now. He flushed, hunched his shoulders and dug his hands deep into his pockets, staring at a point somewhere behind her right shoulder, leaving her to watch the diminishing figure of the neighbouring farmer.

  Hostility there may have been. But it had still been to Fallowfield, Martin Pinkers’ farm, that Shackleton had headed when he had discovered the bodies.

  Yet looking at the wide, empty panorama where else could he have gone?

  Something else had struck Joanna. He had not mentioned Ruthie Summers until she had started questioning him about the family. But if Ruthie had been the female pivot of the farm what would be more natural than that she would have been standing in the kitchen, preparing breakfast, when the assailant had blasted her father and brother with the gun? And if Ruthie had been the one to call them in from the yard what would be more natural than that they would come? So where was she now?

  Her mind was working furiously. If they found Ruthie inside the farmhouse their theory would not fit. They had assumed the assailant had not crossed the threshold but had fired two blasts from the doorway without entering the room. Besides ... the weapon was a double barrelled shotgun. A third shot would mean reloading, a lengthy, cumbersome process. And already she was moving forward. If Ruthie Summers was not in the house or the barns or the milking parlour or anywhere else on the farm ...

  Shackleton broke into her thoughts with a sharp exclamation. ‘The old woman,’ he said. ‘She’ll have to be told. Someone will ‘ave to tell ‘er.’

  ‘What old woman?’

  ‘Miss Lockley.’ He sounded surprised she didn’t know. ‘Miss Hannah Lockley. She will have to be told. She’ll be the next of kin. Close to the family she was. And if anythin’s happened to Ruthie she’ll go fair mad. Devoted to ‘er she was.’

  ‘And where does she ...?’

  Shackleton jerked his head. ‘She lives in the cottage along the way. Brooms, it’s called. She was Mrs Summers’ older sister, aunt to Ruthie and Jack.’

  Joanna craned her neck to peer along the track but it bent too far to the left. ‘Where is the cottage?’

  ‘You can’t see it from here but if you’d carried on up the road instead of turning in you’d have come to it. Small, pretty place it is. Stone built with two trees at the front. You can’t miss it. The name’s on the gate.’

  ‘Thank you, Mr Shackleton.’ She paused for a moment, anxious to set the facts straight in her mind. ‘Can I just get something clear?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘Miss Hannah Lockley was sister-in-law to Mr Aaron Summers?’

  ‘That’s right. And special fond of little Ruthie she was. Loved ‘er, she did, like she was her own daughter. She will be destroyed by all this.’

  Joanna noted he had used the past tense to speak about Ruthie.

  Wearily she moved to go back into the house.

  ‘We’ll want a formal statement from you at some point.’

  ‘No problem,’ he said. ‘You can get in touch with me through the depot.’

  ‘And I suppose we’ll have to ask Miss Lockley to identify the bodies. Although if she’s elderly ...’

  Shackleton gave a dry, mirthless laugh. ‘She ain’t the traditional old lady,’ he said. ‘Tough as old boots she is. Still ‘elps get the hay-bales in.’

  Delaying the moment when she would have to go back into the house she followed him with her eyes as he climbed back into the tanker and swung it out of the farmyard, raising clouds of dust. It might be interesting to study the tyre tracks at some point. Had he really left in such a hurry? Seconds later further clouds were raised by the arrival of the police mobile incident unit. Joanna turned around. It was time to return to the abattoir.

  Maybe she would even need to recall Matthew to look at a third body.

  The SOCOs were a pleasure to watch, she decided, moving carefully around the room, already using grid maps to indicate where each specimen had been taken from. A couple were lifting fingerprints from the glass porch, two others bagging up the furniture covers, the rug from in front of the grate. Even the telephone was being shuffled into a plastic bag. But her work wasn’t in here but outside where the officers were assembled, waiting for their primary briefing.

  She stood on the steps of the Incident Unit and spoke quietly to Mike. ‘Change of plan, Korpanski. The sister is missing and there’s a next-of-kin living almost next door. We’d better visit her before she gets wind of this from elsewhere.’

  Then she faced the waiting officers. ‘The farmer, Aaron Summers and his son, Jack, were found just after ten o’clock this morning by the milk-tanker driver. Both had died of gunshot wounds at some time around six a.m. A shotgun, owned by Mr Summers, was found nearby. Also resident here is Ruthie Summers, daughter and sister of the deceased. This is a big farm with a lot of land to cover. We have to search every inch of it for any evidence linking the killer to the crime. Detective Sergeant Korpanski and I will start in the house. OK, Mike ...?’

  He nodded.

  ‘DC Brown, I want you to take a team and go through the barns, the sheds and all the other outhouses. We’ll start there. If we do not find Ruthie Summers we’ll have to widen our search to include the surrounding fields and hedgerows. I, um.’ She swallowed. ‘I very much want her found.’

  There was no need to underline the implications.

  ‘I don’t have to remind you this is a double murder already. Be vigilant and don’t miss anything, please.’ Someone had to ask it. ‘What if she isn’t in the house or in the barns or anywhere around?’ Joanna took a good long look at WPC Dawn Critchlow’s flushed face. ‘You mean if she’s vanished? Well somebody pulled the trigger. Put it like this. We would be very anxious to talk to her.’

  The ground floor of the farmhouse was surprisingly large with numerous small rooms leading off a dark corridor to the left. Maybe once they had been dairies, cooling rooms, stills or pantries. Now they were all storerooms for various bits of equipment. And each time she threw open a door she expected to find the missing girl.

  But downstairs there was nothing.

  Outside she could hear the men shouting to each other as they systematically searched the outhouses and barns. But the shouts contained no excitement of discovery.

  So the work continued.

  As she and Mike returned to the main living room the bodies of the two men were being moved into the mortuary van and their shapes outlined in chalk, each pool or splash of blood carefully numbered. The SOCOs in their white suits were still deftly sellotaping samples and transferring them to glass slides. They all knew how meticulous this work must be if they were to secure a conviction through forensic evidence.

  One of the SOCOs called her over. ‘Take a look at this, Inspector.’ He was pointing to the chalked outline where Aaron Summers had lain. ‘He was lying on this.’ The rug was faded red and grubby, heavily stained and marked, threadbare and in the centre was a large, circular burn.

  ‘Recent?’

  The SOCO shook his head. ‘But not that old,’ he said. ‘At a guess it was probably done about a month ago. In fact,’ he said, dropping the rug back and straightening up, ‘there are a few burn marks just in this room.’

  ‘Someone careless with a cigarette?’

  He shook his head. ‘I don’t think so. There’s no smell of smoke in here and we’ve found no evidence of either cigarettes or ash in this room. I don’t think any of them smoked.’

  Joanna looked dubiously at the fire. ‘And I suppose it’s too far from the fire for it to have been coal or wood falling from the grate?’

  ‘I doubt it. You see the grill at the front serves as an efficient guard. Besides when wood spits from a fire you tend to get numerous small scorch marks. No ...’ He returned to the burn. ‘This has the
look of a fire started deliberately.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ The SOCO shook his head. ‘I can’t imagine why but it does look as though someone deliberately tried to set fire to the rug. And I’d swear there’s a faint scent of petrol.’

  ‘We’d better send it off for analysis.’

  The SOCO folded it up.

  But now there was no excuse for postponing the upstairs search. She eyed the door with distaste. Korpanski pushed it open. Her heart was thumping as she climbed each step, listening to the creak of old wood and knowing only a few hours before Jack Summers had descended these same stairs and reached the bottom.

  The warm, stale air hit her as she rounded the bend halfway up and her head drew level with the landing. It was dark as a cupboard, oppressive and claustrophobic and she was glad of Mike Korpanski’s heavy presence behind.

  The landing was small, dingy and square. And the doors were all ajar. Four of them. There were four rooms to search. In which of them would they find the missing girl?

  She chose the nearest door first.

  An unmade bed, rumpled sheets and blankets, a heavy, fusty scent. Clothes strewn across the room, yellowed woollen vests, braces. A pair of boots. There was one ornament, a poorly coloured photograph of a long-haired woman, staring into the room. Not smiling. No body.

  They moved on.

  The second room was an old-fashioned bathroom. Cast-iron bath, standing on splayed toes, permanently stained blue where water had dripped from the taps. Still dripped with a hollow, monotonous plonk. Threadbare face cloths a uniform pale grey colour hanging over the side of the sink. Bald towels and soap that smelt of sheep fat. A steel Gillette razor clogged with iron grey bristles, tom plastic curtains at the window. Mould on the window sill.

  Nobody.

  The third door led to another bedroom, surprisingly neat, lacking the stale, musty smell. Instead there was an unexpected scent of the fields reminiscent of flowers and newly mown grass. Sun streamed in through the faded pink curtains and shone bravely through beams of dust. In an attempt to pretty up the room even further someone had put wild flowers in a mug and stood it on the chest of drawers. But the water had evaporated and the flowers long since died. There was a picture on the wall, a cheap print of Constable’s The Haywain in a plastic frame. That and the pink candlewick bedspread darned as carefully as Aaron’s sock told her they were in Ruthie’s room.

  But where was Ruthie?

  The third bedroom held the strongest odour of the cowshed and again the fusty smell of an unaired room. No attempt had been made to make this room pretty. Cloth had been nailed across the window and the bedding was heavily stained where someone had lain. Jack Summers?

  Joanna let out a relieved sigh. ‘She isn’t here, Mike. Thank goodness. She isn’t here.’

  Mike was peering out through the window, watching the men on the ground. ‘So where is she, Jo?’

  It was a relief to find themselves in the fresh, clean air again and the sunshine seemed to put a brave light on the ugly events of the day. They went around the back of the house to the yard. The dog barked and pulled against his restraint but when Joanna approached it he gave a low, threatening growl before slinking back into his kennel, dragging the chain behind him like Marley’s ghost.

  She caught up with Mike in front of the barn door, talking to one of the uniformed officers who was staring ruefully down at his shoes. Unmistakable egg yolk, bits of shell and straw were sticking to the black, polished leather.

  Mike was laughing. ‘McBrine here’s had a good look through the henhouse.’

  ‘Plenty of eggs, ma’am. Couple of good layers there.’

  She couldn’t dissolve her tension quite so easily. ‘But no body?’

  ‘No, ma’am. Not even a dead chicken.’ He hesitated. ‘We’ve had a thorough search throughout the whole farm. She isn’t here. And we could do with some Wellington boots.’

  She scanned the horizon. ‘Then the fields?’

  Mike moved towards her. ‘Maybe the fields, Joanna. But it might be better if we looked at the facts under our noses. The gun was theirs. Two people were shot. She’s missing. I don’t have to spell it out, do I? She’s either dead or she did it herself and is holed up somewhere. Maybe the question we should be asking ourselves is where would she run to?’

  Chapter Four

  2.30 p.m.

  The contrast between the horrors of the murder scene and the rural tranquillity of the narrow lane had the peculiar effect of making both scenes unreal. And the hot weather simply added to the sense of strangeness. As they walked along the dusty track even Mike made a grudging comment. ‘It’s too nice a day for a murder.’

  ‘Well we’ve already had two so let’s hope Ruthie Summers is spending the day innocently with her aunt having spent the night there.’

  His answering grunt was doubtful.

  They walked steadily for a few hundred yards until they reached the bend and Hardacre Farm was at last out of sight. It was just after they had turned the corner that they spotted the tiny stone cottage almost hidden behind two tall conifers. Joanna pushed open the wicket gate neatly inscribed, Brooms. The front garden was a tribute to industry, tidily divided into rows of sprouting vegetables, tall, caned beans and peas, carrots, cabbages and lettuces. Again the front door was contained within a porch but this was not the fancy glass appendage of Hardacre but a green painted affair with a shelf cluttered with gardening tools, gloves, a trowel, a small fork, a wooden trug. And in the corner, cleaned and ready for use, stood a spade and a hoe.

  The knocker was huge and old, a fox’s head of wrought iron. Mike picked it up and dropped it heavily.

  No one came. The cottage was silent and apparently deserted. Joanna felt a horrid, creeping sensation.

  Not here too?

  Surely there could not be some maniac pacing the moors, blasting away at people who selected such isolation. Never mind the voice of logic which lectured her. Never mind that the gun had been picked up and fired into the sitting room of Hardacre Farm and was almost certainly now being bagged up by the SOCOs.

  Had he come here first?

  In sudden panic she hammered on the door, louder this time and shouted. ‘Hello – Hello.’

  Abruptly it was pulled open. Hannah Lockley stood scowling, hands on hips, a strong, dominant woman in her early sixties with a tough, weathered complexion, iron-grey hair mannishly cut by an unpractised hand. The same navy cotton dungarees.

  And she looked angry. ‘Who are you?’ she demanded. ‘Bloody ramblers, lost again? I don’t know why you always end up here. The path is thatterway.’ And she pointed back out through the gate to her right.

  Something in Joanna’s face must have stopped her.

  Mike fished out his card. ‘Police,’ he said.

  Hannah Lockley looked even more hostile. ‘So you’re the ones with the blasted sirens,’ she snapped. ‘I’ve heard them coming and going all morning. What do you mean disturbing the countryside?’ Unwittingly she echoed Matthew’s views. ‘It isn’t necessary you know.’ Her eyes, cold, pale blue, narrowed with dislike.

  They both noted that she displayed no curiosity as to why they were there.

  Joanna tried again. ‘May we come in?’

  Hannah Lockley barred the way. ‘Is it poachers again? I’ve told your lot before. I’m not interested. They can go to blazes for all I care. Let them have the bloody rabbits.’

  Joanna frowned. This was a waste of precious time. ‘You are Miss Hannah Lockley?’ she asked formally. ‘Who wants to know?’

  ‘I’m Detective Inspector Joanna Piercy of the Leek Police. Miss Lockley, I’m afraid I have some rather bad news for you. May we come in?’

  ‘No you can’t. Whatever you’ve got to say you can say out here on the step.’ She gave a fond glance around the small garden and beyond to the wide panorama of endless green fields and her voice softened. ‘There’s no one around to hear, at least no one who matters. Just animals, birds
and insects, Inspector.’

  Mike stepped forward. ‘It would be better if we came in, Miss Lockley.’

  ‘And if I don’t invite you?’

  There was a brief pause, a battle of wills during which Joanna gained the distinct impression that on the old woman’s part it was not done without humour. But as for Mike ...

  ‘Is your niece here, Miss Lockley?’

  A veil dropped over the open, country face and the aggression seemed to melt away. ‘Ruthie?’ she said. ‘No. Ruthie isn’t here.’

  ‘When did you last see her?’

  The hostility was back. ‘What’s it got to do with you?’

  Incredibly still no alarm was registering. ‘We’ve just come from the farm, Miss Lockley. Hardacre Farm. Now please, let us come in. It really would be easier.’

  Hannah Lockley shoved her hands into her trouser pockets like a rebellious teenager. ‘Easier for you, mebbe.’

  ‘Please.’

  Muttering under her breath and without an invitation to follow, Hannah Lockley strode back into the house, throwing behind her a few choice epithets.

  They followed her to the kitchen at the back. This too was old fashioned but neat and what had been left unchanged had now returned to vogue. Painted fern green, with a Belfast sink and scrubbed pine cupboards. It was a kitchen to tempt Homes & Gardens.

  They faced her over a square, stripped pine table.

  ‘Well as you’re here,’ she said grudgingly, ‘you may as well sit down.’

  Joanna was struck by sudden curiosity. How would Hannah Lockley take the news? She seemed tough, unemotional. But there had been flashes of sentiment too.

  Miss Lockley must have picked up on her thoughts. ‘You needn’t be careful of me,’ she said steadily. ‘I’m not afraid.’

  Joanna gave Mike one swift, despairing glance before she plunged in. ‘This morning, at around ten, a discovery was made, at Hardacre Farm. The milk-tanker driver found two bodies in the sitting room. They’d been shot. I’m sorry.’

  The old woman stared straight ahead. But Joanna knew she had heard by a slight tic at the side of her mouth.