It explained something about the events of the morning. ‘So that means neither Aaron nor Jack Summers let the cows out. They never got as far as the field.’
Mike spoke over her shoulder. “That makes a bit more sense.’
‘Martin Pinkers has been quite helpful. He’s even mended the gate and done the afternoon milking too.’
She spoke to Mike. ‘So we’re left with this. The cows let themselves out of the field and Ruth Summers has vanished. I think we should search her room again to see if she’s taken any clothes with her.’
‘So you think ...?’
She wheeled around. ‘What am I supposed to think, Mike? Her father and brother have been slaughtered. Hannah Lockley wasn’t too keen on admitting it but it seems sweet little Ruthie could shoot straight. From a range of less than four feet I don’t imagine she’d miss. And while Aaron must have faced his attacker even though she was holding a gun Jack came crashing down the stairs, also unsuspecting. Now what am I supposed to think?’
‘All right, Jo,’ he said uncomfortably. ‘Keep your hair on.’
She sighed. ‘I’m sorry. It’s been a long day. Matthew seems determined to live somewhere in these wretched moors and I’ve spent the last six hours expecting to stumble across a third body.’ She made a move towards the house. ‘Let’s get this over with, shall we?’
The sun had moved from the little bedroom with its vain attempt at femininity and now it looked dingy and dark. The scent of flowers was a little less obvious as though Ruthie’s presence was itself beginning to fade.
They stood in the doorway for a few minutes, surveying the room until Joanna motioned towards the chest of drawers. ‘We’ll start there.’
The top drawer was stuck, needing a sharp tug to display white underwear. The second drawer was stuffed full of sweaters neatly folded – and the third and fourth drawer too. From underneath the bed Mike pulled a brown, canvas zip bag. ‘I wouldn’t have thought she’d have had a selection of suitcases,’ he said grimly and slapped it on the bed. ‘I bet this is the only one.’ He opened the zip and fished around with his hand. It was empty. He slid his fingers through the lining and pulled out a strip of three photographs, head and shoulders, taken in an automatic booth. The bottom one had been snipped off with curving nail scissors. Joanna stared curiously at the faintly anxious face of a woman, probably in her late twenties, her hair pulled away from a thin face that stared – almost pleaded – into the camera. And somehow Joanna felt a faint sense of shock. This dark-eyed, sensitive face looked nothing like the picture she had formed of a healthy, robust farmer’s daughter. This young woman was cast from a different mould. Typically Korpanski stared at the picture too but he saw something different. ‘How many pictures come on a strip?’
‘Four or five. I’m not sure.’
‘You need two to send off for a passport,’ he said. Wondering if she had been misled, she stared again at the strip of photographs. Barely visible, on the top edge of the girl’s shoulder, she could make out three or four fingertips. As Ruth Summers had sat in the passport photo booth someone had rested their hand on her shoulder. And far from being a work-roughened farmer’s hand it looked neat and clean, long, slim fingers with oval, manicured nails, polished, shaped and filed. And it was a small hand. A child’s hand? She met Mike’s gaze. ‘I suppose,’ she said reluctantly, ‘that if two photos are missing there is a possibility Ruthie’s legged it somewhere. But if she did, she didn’t take any of her clothes with her.’
‘Well I’m not a woman,’ Mike said unnecessarily. ‘But the stuff in the drawers hardly looked like fancy stuff. I think if my wife was about to hop it she’d leave that scruffy lot behind.’
She was forced to agree with him. ‘So where is she?’
Mike sat down heavily on the bed. ‘Just a thought,’ he said. ‘What if this ...’ He was careful not to touch the photograph. ‘What if she had a man – a boyfriend – father and brother none too happy about it, losing their housekeeper. They quarrel, she or the boyfriend blasts them both and they leg it, together.’
‘Where?’
‘To boyfriend.’
‘But her aunt says she never met anybody. She was always here.’
‘Even here she must have met some men.’
‘Who?’
‘I don’t know, Joanna. Cattle feed salesmen, vets, people at market, other farmers.’
‘Yes,’ she said slowly, still studying the thin, sensitive face with its haunting dark eyes. ‘It could have been like that.’ But to herself she acknowledged she was unhappy with the scenario. And yet behind the large eyes was an apology, a sort of veiled guilt. Had she known then what might come some time in the future?
Joanna dropped the strip of photos into the specimen bag but she couldn’t rid herself of the thin, haunting face.
They spent the later part of the sweltering afternoon and the early part of the evening cooking in the Incident Room, co-ordinating the continuing search of the surrounding farmland, filling in forms and swatting the insistent flies. And as the screeches and chirps of a summer night played a high-pitched musical background around them the soft lowing of contented cows provided tenor accompaniment.
They had done three hours of solid work. Gradually the evening stilled. The flies moved out and the midges arrived. Most of the extra officers had gone home. They would return early in the morning. Only a skeleton staff was left as Joanna and Mike planned the following day.
Joanna knew the first obstacle would be the post mortem.
‘And then we should interview Martin Pinkers,’ she said, clipping together the sheaf of preliminary statements gathered by the uniformed officers. ‘Although he doesn’t seem to have seen much.’
‘Sometimes the lads don’t ask the right questions.’
‘True. And let’s get a print out of telephone calls to and from the farm. If there is a boyfriend it’s even conceivable that he has abducted her.’
‘You’re determined to see her as a victim.’
‘Maybe because she looks more like a victim than a killer.’
He gave a snort of doubt. And what other leads have we got?’
‘If we haven’t completely obliterated them I’d like to take a closer look at the tyre marks in the yard and Shackleton’s milk tanker.’
‘What for?’
‘I just want to know whether he really did burn the rubber as much as he says he did. That’s all. Just a simple check. You know as well as I do one little lie, another little lie. And why? So we’ll check everything he’s told us so far.’
The telephone shrilled at her elbow and she picked it up. It was Matthew.
‘The PM’s fixed for nine thirty in the morning,’ he said. ‘We’ll have them tidily arranged at the morgue ready for formal identification before we start.’ He paused. ‘Time for a drink tonight, Jo?’
‘I’m sorry, Matthew. I’ve another call to make.’
‘Fine.’ She could hear the pent up frustration in his voice yet at the same time she knew it would be useless to apologize. It had all happened too many times before.
‘So I’ll go home to the flat then.’
But he was angrier than usual. And after she had put the phone down she felt uneasy. Part guilt, part her own frustration.
That Mike was watching her with an unfathomable expression in his eyes didn’t help at all.
‘So where are we going?’ he asked.
‘Where do you think?’
Chapter Five
10 p.m.
Floodlights bathed the front of the farmhouse, picking out the crevices between each stone in sharp, black lines. Even the animals were quiet but it was not the quiet of sleep. She could hear them shift restlessly, a few soft grunts. It was almost as though they were waiting. For what? Maybe it was fanciful but as Joanna picked her way along the lane she could almost convince herself that Aaron’s herd of cows were silently waiting to witness justice done, for the police to leave Hardacre Farm in rural peace again.
She would
have confided her fancies to Mike but she knew from experience he would not share them, so they walked away from the farmhouse in silence.
Two police had been left to guard the door, WPC Dawn Critchlow and Eddie McBrine, PC of the Moorlands Patrol. Joanna knew from experience that night vigils were usually the worst watch – cold, uneventful, cheerless and boring. But on this rare balmy night the task was almost enviable. Tonight there was a magic around, stars, and indigo sky, a red, setting sun.
Dawn spoke first. ‘Off home, are you?’
Mike answered. ‘Not yet. We’re on a mystery trip.’
‘Where’s that then?’ she asked cheekily.
Joanna answered the question. ‘We’re going to visit someone who rented a barn from Aaron Summers.’
‘A neighbour?’
‘Yes.’
‘Think he’s got anything to do with it?’
Joanna searched around the dim panorama, unable to pick out even that one neighbour’s light.
‘They’ve all got something to do with it,’ she said, ‘until proved otherwise.’
Mike mopped his forehead. ‘Why does it seem to get hotter at night?’ He slapped his arm. ‘And these bloody mosquitoes.’
‘Well I’d rather have mosquitoes,’ Joanna said, ‘than those ghastly, repulsive flies. The way they buzzed around the bodies turned my stomach.’
‘Trouble is,’ Mike said grumpily, ‘we just aren’t acclimatized to this sort of heat.’
They left the two officers to their vigil and walked companionably for a few minutes before Joanna ventured to ask, ‘You don’t mind coming to interview Mr Mothershaw tonight, do you?’
‘Well, I wasn’t going to go home anyway. Not until later. It’s my night at the gym.’
‘Bit late for that, isn’t it?’
‘It shuts late,’ he said shortly and she refrained from comment. But she had noticed Mike’s increased irritability, put it down to the weather. She had noticed something else too, something that could not be attributed to the hot weather. Detective Sergeant Mike Korpanski had recently been wearing some very flashy ties.
They continued further in silence.
And suddenly the night dropped down from the sky, like a navy, woollen blanket. The way forward was invisible. ‘Now from what Hannah Lockley was saying the Owl Hole is somewhere beyond the milking shed through the trees.’ Joanna flashed her torch ahead of them, lighting up a pair of frightened rabbit’s eyes and a narrow lane which curved ahead. Either side of the lane tall trees bowed into an archway. All was still. The entire night was holding its breath for the next development. The stillness was oppressive and not for the first time since she had come to Leek Joanna was glad of Mike’s bulky presence.
One of the trees was filled with squawking rooks which started quarrelling as the two police officers passed and a few of them were ousted from their perches. They flapped their heavy black wings and croaked their objections before settling back. And all was still again.
Quiet and still.
Mike spoke at her elbow. ‘Can’t stand the damned rooks. Noisy bloody things, aren’t they? No wonder the farmers like aiming pot shots at them. Bloody carrion.’
‘Well, it wasn’t a rook someone took a pot shot at this morning,’ she observed drily, “but the farmer himself. And it wasn’t the rooks that did it. Mike,’ she touched his arm, ‘do you think that’s the place?’
Across the top of the thick trees they could vaguely make out a faint glimmer of light.
‘I suppose it has to be. There isn’t exactly anywhere else, is there?’
‘Nowhere.’
The lane came to an abrupt end in a wooden stile. To the right a narrow path wound through the trees and out of sight.
A round building was vaguely silhouetted through the branches, tall and tapering towards the top.
‘It looks a bit like a windmill.’
‘A windmill that’s lost its sails.’
‘What did Miss Lockley say it was? A grain store. Well, let’s see what our sculptor has to reveal to us. I don’t fancy getting lost in these woods with our killer still on the loose.’
‘The daughter.’ Mike said the words with difficulty and she knew her apprehension had communicated to him. ‘What if it’s her. What if she has flipped her lid and she’s hanging around here somewhere?’
As far as we know she’ll be unarmed,’ Joanna said calmly. ‘Barra’s taken the gun.’ She couldn’t resist pulling his leg. ‘Not nervous, are you, Mike?’
‘Not a hundred per cent happy,’ he admitted and she walked the next few yards reflecting on how much their relationship had changed in the five years since she had taken up her post in the quiet, moorland town. Then Mike had been antagonistic, resentful, difficult. And now? Even to herself she was reluctant to admit it. Now she relied on him. They worked well together, her ideas with his practicality, her intuition with his stolid progression, ox like, moving forward. Between them they had gained results. Mike had shed his difficult reputation. But now? She peered at him suspiciously. She wasn’t sure. There was something intangibly different about him. He was a bit more edgy, slightly quicker to take offence. It had been there for three, maybe four weeks. And it hadn’t made him an easier person to work with.
Her musings were brought abruptly to a halt by
Mike shining a beam to the left of the path. ‘What the hell?’
The trees were gnarled and old, bent into curious shapes by neglect and the elements. With very little imagination Joanna could have convinced herself that the wood was peopled with strange beings. She gave a nervous little laugh. Trees. That was all. Misshapen, lumpy trees. The evening was all black now with a seed of red faintly visible on the horizon. They ignored the shapes and carried on along the rough path then stopped.
In front of them stood a sentinel, a man, twelve feet high with arms outstretched as though to grab them. Mike let out a sharp breath.
‘What the ...?’
‘Shine the torch on it.’
It was a tree. Again just a tree, initially conveniently human shaped before being formed into a person by someone, presumably the ‘Art Person’. Twigs at its head were unruly hair. The trunk formed a body, split at the base into two legs that ended in blackened roots. And the branches that reached down towards the path had been extended with twigs to form skinny fingers.
Joanna shivered. It was monstrously lifelike.
Mike broke the silence. ‘The face,’ he said. ‘Joanna. Look at the face.’
She shone her torch upwards and was both shocked and impressed. With rough carving the sculptor had achieved a reality and expression which altered as she shifted the beam of the torch. And the strange shadows and lighting effects gave the hollow eyes a malevolent gleam. Glass, varnish? Something shone, looking evil, and yet at the same time indifferent; powerful without being conscious of its own power.
She had to admit, the man’s work was good. No – not good, brilliant. Brilliant and original and despite the primary reason for interviewing Titus Mothershaw – that he was a murder suspect – she was curious to meet the man behind this creation.
Mike was not so appreciative. ‘What does he call this?’
She laughed. Mike could be as bovine as some of Aaron Summers’ herd and yet ... It did her good. ‘I believe,’ she said, ‘that it’s a form of art.’
Mike had views of his own. ‘Why the hell can’t he leave the trees alone?’ He touched one. ‘It’s just silly, this.’
In the darkness Joanna smiled and knew that however fascinating she might find the Tree Man’s creator Mike would have nothing in common with him.
‘We’d better get a move on.’ She teased Mike further. ‘Who knows what happens to monsters like these after dark.’
As they wandered along the track they flashed their torches to the left and right, picking out strange carvings in almost all of the trees. The wood carver had been busy. Some were faces so human it would have been no surprise to her to see their lips open, their
eyes blink. Some were carvings in stumps, fauns, wood nymphs, grotesque animals and one round stump had been carefully carved to form a pillar box. The whole was like a children’s story of some fantastic wood where everything was alive and full of character, and for the time it took them to approach the Owl Hole Joanna almost forgot about the deaths. She wondered whether the wood could hold so much atmosphere in the daylight. They were nearly at the strange building when Joanna caught sight of some objects hanging from the trees. Hannah Lockley had been right. Titus Mothershaw did use coat hangers.
A tinkle behind them made Mike swear, turn sharply and flash his torch. Titus Mothershaw had formed wind chimes from small stones, bored with a hole and hung from the branches. Another tree had had its branches bent and lashed together to form an Indian wigwam.
And then, quite suddenly, her torch picked out a finely carved face in the trunk of a tree. She studied it and felt completely attuned to the sculptor’s statement. It was something to do with natural beauty enhanced by human hand. And it seemed a million miles away from the bodies they had found this morning, people made grotesque, again, by human hand. She moved her torch up and down the bark to study the face better. A knot in the wood formed a nose, a shaped branch, an ear, a gash, the mouth. And now she was doubly anxious to meet this clever emigré from London because the face reminded her, just a little, of Ruthie Summers. ‘Bloody crap,’ Mike was muttering. ‘And I bet he cons people, charges a fortune for these bits of wood. Besides,’ he objected, ‘it’s out of place here. I mean this was a mucky, old-fashioned sort of farm. It just looks stupid, all this art stuff. He should have left the place alone. Belongs in London.’
‘Well I like it.’ Joanna had an impulse to defend this sculptor’s talent. ‘But I would love to know what old Aaron Summers must have thought of it. He must have scratched his head. Who knows. Maybe he hated it too.’
But Mike misunderstood her statement. ‘Hang on a minute, Jo. I mean I don’t like the stuff. But it’s hardly a motive for murder, not being appreciated.’
‘Oh, Mike,’ she said despairingly.
‘Well,’ he said. ‘I bet all this took him hours. And I bet he would be upset if anyone threatened to spoil them. Maybe ...’
Scaring Crows Page 6