Scaring Crows

by Priscilla Masters

  He jumped out of the car, grinning at her. ‘So you made it.’

  ‘I couldn’t resist it. It’s such a lovely evening and I’ve worked hard enough for one day.’

  ‘Are you getting anywhere with the case?’

  ‘A few blind alleys. None of them have led anywhere – so far.’ She glanced around at the village. ‘It’s a peaceful place, isn’t it? Seems a hundred miles from the death and destruction of Hardacre. And yet it’s less than five, as the crow flies. Matthew,’ she said impulsively. ‘Why don’t we take a quick look around the house, get a takeaway and eat it in my garden with a bottle of chilled wine I just happen to have in my fridge?’

  He looked uncomfortably back towards his car. And that was when she noticed Eloise, slumped in the front seat, her blonde hair catching the last of the fading light.

  She looked to Matthew for an explanation.

  He threw his hands up in the air. ‘A phone call,’ he said, ‘from Jane, early this morning. She got the chance of an early flight.’ He looked sheepish. ‘I mean – what could I do? She just stuck Eloise on the train and I had to pick her up. I’m sorry, Jo.’

  He moved back towards the car, his face mirroring his emotions. Pride in his daughter, a fierce love, but there was embarrassment and guilt too.

  Joanna stood glued to the spot because she had her own feelings about Matthew’s daughter. Sure, Eloise had intelligence and resilience, strength of character and stamina. But it was tempered with a vicious, feminine spite which she had inherited from her mother. And Joanna knew that the emotion Eloise felt for the woman who had finally parted her parents was pure, undisguised hatred. Against it she felt powerless. There was nothing she could do to deflect it. She looked again, longingly, at the cold, stone peace of the house. When she and Matthew were living together there would be many such visits from Eloise. The question was, was their combined love strong enough to withstand such a destructive force?

  She doubted it.

  Watching the girl flick her long, pale hair out of her eyes, she caught Eloise watching her in the wing mirror. The girl smiled.

  She watched Matthew urge his daughter to get out of the car and take a look inside the cottage.

  She heard him try to persuade her to join them in the pub. She did not, however add her encouragement to his but stood still and watched.

  Matthew returned with a sigh. ‘Says she’s knackered after the train journey.’

  ‘Well we’ve got the key,’ she said steadily. ‘We may as well take a look and then you can take Eloise home.’

  Inside all the promises of the brochure were fulfilled. There were minor, cosmetic blemishes, plaster peeling, flushed formica doors, damp patches and leaking taps. But the proportions of the rooms were perfect. The high ceilings and long, Georgian sash windows were original. And the kitchen overlooked the garden as well as the field at the back and Waterfall church. Even better there was a small Victorian conservatory at the back which overlooked the orchard with tufts of grass and apple trees. It was long, green, shady and very pretty.

  Upstairs there was a decent sized bathroom, a master bedroom with an attached room easily big enough for a shower, sink and toilet, two more reasonably sized bedrooms and a dry loft. Joanna felt her excitement grow and refused to be discouraged by the stone sink and array of spider-filled cupboards which served as a kitchen. She and Matthew pushed open the French windows to the conservatory and then walked outside to look at the outbuildings, a coal house, a shed and a small garage, probably too tight a fit for his BMW. But it would take Joanna’s Peugot 205 without any problem. And more importantly, her bike.

  Matthew nosed around the shed before giving her a straight look. ‘How would you feel about keeping Sparky here?’

  ‘I’m not mucking out a horse every day.’

  ‘We could pay a schoolgirl in return for allowing her to ride him when Eloise is with her mother. And when she’s here ...’

  Joanna shuddered. ‘Are you suggesting Eloise would spend most of her school holidays here – with us?’

  He took her hand. ‘For part of the time. In the holidays. Jane’s flat is too small. There’s nothing for Eloise to do there.’ Then the common refrain. ‘She is my daughter.’

  ‘But she isn’t mine. And I won’t suffer her malice to expiate your guilt for leaving Jane. That was your decision, Matthew, not mine. She can come here – as agreed – every other weekend, for part of the school holidays. Not all the time.’

  ‘But Jane doesn’t mind.’

  ‘I do,’ she said.

  ‘Please, Joanna, be fair,’ he begged and she hated herself for letting him even catch a glimpse of her childish jealousy.

  At the same time a cold feeling gnawed at her stomach. She simply couldn’t supply what he wanted, an open-ended welcome to his daughter.

  ‘I’d better go,’ she said quickly. ‘How long will Eloise be with you?’

  ‘For a while,’ Matthew said shortly.

  Joanna held out her hand. ‘Then goodbye,’ she said, ‘for a while.’

  Chapter Ten

  Friday, July 10th, 6.45 a.m.

  After a sleepless night she rode her bike the few miles to Hardacre before seven in the morning, stopping in the herd of cows being driven along the lane by a yawning Pinkers. He was working hard these days, running the two farms. He greeted her pleasantly. ‘Good morning, Inspector. Lovely day for a ride. Keepin’ fit, are you?’

  She let her gaze wander deliberately through the herd before riding up on the verge to avoid being trampled. ‘You have a fine herd of cows, Mr Pinkers.’

  ‘Oh they are that.’ He grinned.

  ‘Good milkers?’ she asked carelessly.

  He shot her a sharp glance. ‘They ‘ave a fair yield.’ But her dislike for the farmer was steadily mounting. Hannah’s story had been a dirty one. Moorland farming was a scratch at a living. To rob your own neighbour of his most valuable beast might well be to destroy his livelihood and Hannah’s story, told simply, with little emotion, had the ring of truth behind it. And she was convinced, as the Summers family had been, that Pinkers had stolen the cows as well as the bull. She frowned at something pricking her memory. The bull’s name. Doric. Wasn’t it something to do with Greek architecture? Doric columns, firm, plain, strong? Who, in this environment, had named a bull with such classical insight? Titus Mothershaw?

  Ruthie?

  She watched Pinkers drive the cows into the field where they immediately bent their heads and started grazing. Pinkers stood back and watched her as she cycled on.

  Apart from the tape across the door there was no sign of the recent activities but she was anxious to go back in. She was no believer in ghosts but there had to be something here, some motive, some mark, a sign.

  She looked up at the grey, stone facade, unmistakably neglected and old, with the bright glass porch the only visible attempt at prettiness. She pulled the tape back and PC Timmis seemed to appear from nowhere. ‘You’re bright and early, ma’am.’

  ‘It’s the only way I can get to use my bike these days. What with the heat and the extra hours.’

  He grinned. ‘Hard done by, are you?’

  She smiled abstractedly. ‘Get the kettle on will you, Timmis. And stop cracking jokes at my expense.’ He vanished back into the house.

  She mounted the three stone steps but instead of stepping straight into the house she turned and stood still for a while, listening to the birdsong, the cows mooing and the soft peace. She stared across the wide green valley and wondered which field or tree root, hedgerow or barn held Ruthie Summers’ decaying body now. In such weather putrefaction would be swift. Then she passed through the jewelled lights of the glass porch. But today they did not evoke stained-glass windows or the distant sound of psalm singing. Only apprehension. She dropped her gaze. Glass only formed the roof and the top half of the porch. Below were wooden panels stained green. And here was a jumble of old wellingtons, worn shoes, a blackthorn walking stick and a tall, metal umbrella
stand. This must have been where the gun had stood. She looked upwards, to the Victorian lantern, dusty and clogged with spiders’ webs. Then she reached out to touch the wooden door of the farmhouse, fingering a huge, rusting key which stuck out of a wide keyhole. The door must never have been locked. It was stiff and warped, swollen by damp. It would have been almost impossible either to close it or to lock it. One of the floor tiles was loose and rocked underfoot. A huge, black fly buzzed into her face and she panicked, swept it away with a brusque movement of her hands. She felt it brush against her fingers and shuddered. Then she jerked back and conjured up the vision of how it had happened. Here the assailant must have stood. The farmer must have backed into the sitting room, one Wellington on, the other still in the porch. The assailant had picked up the gun, aimed and fired. And then Jack had come running down the stairs ...

  She had gone over this sequence of events so often in her mind that she could picture it clearly. Only one part of the picture was missing, the face of the assailant. She dropped her eyes to the floor. There was no sign. Nothing here. No footprints. One could almost believe that no one had stood here to do those awful things. No one had pulled the trigger.

  No one? Or a dryad, a wood nymph?

  Shaking away the vision she stepped inside.

  The room looked different today, a typical scene of the crime a couple of days after the SOCOs had gleaned every bit of evidence from it. Marked with tape, heavily chalked where the bodies had lain. Most of the blood had been cleaned up. But there were still signs, easy to interpret for the practised eye, dark stains, and paler ones where evidence had been removed.

  Joanna crossed the room towards the kitchen and met Timmis, holding out a mug of tea.

  ‘I was just coming to find you.’

  She took the tea and passed through into the kitchen to peer out of the glass panel in the back door which overlooked the courtyard – and the henhouse.

  She frowned. What was it about this damned henhouse? Why did it still bother her, this wooden shack, full of eggs for police constables to smash underfoot when they searched it?

  Drawn towards it she rested her tea on the work surface and opened the back door. Outside the courtyard was noisy with the clucking of hens and the squawking of the cockerel who strutted outside the low door of the henhouse. She pushed it open. Inside was dark, the ceiling low. And there was a pungent scent. Rotten eggs and manure. Joanna looked at the floor. Broken eggshells. And now it was her shoes which were plastered in egg, yolk and shell.

  She stood still, closed her eyes and began to think ...

  Superintendent Colclough was lying in wait for her at the door to the Incident caravan. The warm weather was not suiting him either. His face was purple and sweating. She heard his wheezy comments to the two PCs as she approached, wishing the lads a good morning, and cursing as he skated across a cow pat.

  ‘Morning, Piercy.’ He gave a pointed glance at his shoe and she smothered a smile and avoided dropping her eyes to hers, similarly covered in farmyard debris.

  Colclough gave her a wide, chinny grin. Considering how little progress had been made in the first few days of the murder he seemed in remarkably good humour. After all, they had not discovered a motive, the missing girl, or the killer. And Colclough was a man who loved twenty-four-hour arrests. They made him puff out his chest and polish his medals. But then, politically speaking, this murder was hardly of significance. It wasn’t even earning headlines – any more. The local papers had moved away from the tale of rural crime and back to another story of arson in a terraced house in Meir. A woman and her two children had been burnt alive. And the tale was one of marital infidelity, romance and a large helping of illicit sex. The fact that the man in the case was married and a prominent professional had led to moralizing, prudery and allegations of hypocrisy. But it was the two dead children’s screams which had wrung the city’s hearts and grasped the headlines.

  Sentimental stuff compared with the shooting of a couple of lonely farmers. She could almost see Colclough dismiss it as an insignificant crime.

  Not to her.

  She wished him a good morning and followed him inside, Colclough settling down comfortably behind her desk as though he had the idea of spending the entire morning watching her work.

  ‘Things going all right are they, Piercy?’

  ‘Slowly,’ she replied guardedly.

  ‘Good.’ He rasped his hands together. ‘Well this is the place to be,’ he said, looking around the Incident caravan. ‘Nice rural setting. Solving country crime. Hot day.’ His tone was jocular.

  She couldn’t resist a dig. ‘Flies, mosquitoes and the stink of cow dung,’ she said lightly. ‘Not to mention ...’ And she glanced at both their shoes.

  ‘Be poetic, Piercy,’ he said, frowning. ‘This ugly cynicism doesn’t suit you.’

  ‘No, sir.’ And she sighed and dropped into Mike’s chair.

  Already it was hot. The flies were buzzing up the windows.

  Colclough leant across the desk, his blue eyes sharp. ‘So what’s the story so far? No sign of the girl?’

  ‘Not hide nor hair.’

  Colclough winced. ‘Nasty way with words you have, Piercy.’

  ‘Sorry, sir.’

  It was still early and she was sick of apologizing.

  ‘So where are you up to? What’s on the agenda?’

  He must have had a better night’s sleep than she with her constant thoughts about Eloise ...

  Colclough was watching her. ‘So?’

  She forced herself to concentrate on the present. ‘Mike and I thought we’d haul Shackleton in for questioning.’

  ‘Shackleton?’

  ‘The tanker driver, sir.’

  ‘So what’s the lead?’

  ‘Not much,’ she admitted. ‘He discovered the bodies. There’s been some question whether he had a relationship with the missing girl.’ And she added the bit about the BPAS leaflet.

  Colclough made a face. ‘Nothing more definite than that?’

  ‘He was fond of her. He seemed genuinely upset by her disappearance.’

  ‘Hmm.’ Colclough’s eyes bored into hers. ‘But no sightings?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘Passport?’

  ‘She’d never been issued with one.’

  The question showed how little Colclough understood. Ruthie Summers had probably never been out of Staffordshire, let alone to a foreign country. And alone?

  ‘Bank account?’

  She shook her head. ‘The bank account is negative. She didn’t take any money with her. There had been nothing more than small, regular withdrawals, barely enough to cover their food.’

  ‘And response to your leaflets?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  He drummed his fingers along the desk. Any other leads?’

  ‘No, sir. Not unless you want to consider the cattle rustling.’

  Colclough gave a hoot of laughter, setting his jowls wobbling like poorly set jellies. ‘Cattle rustling? Think this is the Wild West, Piercy?’ He stopped laughing abruptly. ‘Keep a grip on reality.’ He stood up. ‘It seems to me that you really haven’t got very far at all. Now what’s all this about cattle rustling?’

  She could hardly expect him to understand unless he too had immersed himself in these people’s lives.

  ‘Three good milkers and a valuable bull were stolen from Hardacre last autumn. At the same time the Summers’ neighbour, a Martin Pinkers, acquired some new milk producers and a couple of his cows became pregnant without visible signs of a live bull or the vet’s artificial insemination.’

  ‘And what’s this got to do with the murders?’ he asked irritably.

  ‘There was bad blood between the two farms.’ She paused before producing her trump card.

  ‘When Aaron and Jack Summers challenged Pinkers with the theft of the animals he levelled a shotgun at them. They were frightened enough to back off.’

  Colclough was impressed. ‘I see,’ he said thoug
htfully. ‘So are you hauling him in this afternoon?’

  ‘No evidence, sir, yet. We’ve asked Miss Hannah Lockley to return to Hardacre with us.’

  ‘To what end?’

  ‘I simply want her to take a really good look around. I have the feeling we’re missing something inside the farmhouse, sir.’

  Colclough had cheered up. He liked action. Plans. ‘Sounds sensible to me, Piercy.’ He beamed.

  ‘And everything else so far has turned out negative,’ she said. ‘There’s no sign of Ruthie Summers. The prints on the gun are all smeared but they’re family all right and the photographs we’ve found of Ruthie bear her prints and her brother’s only. No one else’s.’

  But one photograph was still missing. And was it Titus Mothershaw’s fingers which rested on the missing girl’s shoulder?

  ‘There’s something else I’ve heard,’ Colclough said slowly. ‘I keep hearing talk about Jack Summers. Not right in the head, could fly off the handle. Unpredictable. Is it true?’

  ‘Jack Summers had an accident as a baby,’ Joanna said reluctantly. ‘At post mortem Matthew could see the damage quite clearly. He fell from a pushchair ...’

  Unbidden the phrase wandered into her mind. Did he fall or was he pushed? Had Ruthie’s sweet angel face concealed a devious and malicious character?

  ‘... Jack Summers was strange and unpredictable. That’s true. He needed direction but he worked hard enough on the farm.’

  ‘Was he violent?’

  ‘No recorded assaults on other people,’ Joanna said cautiously, ‘but he kicked a neighbouring farmer’s dog so hard the animal had to be put down. And he set fire to things.’

  Even as she spoke she felt disloyal. Jack Summers was not under investigation. He had been murdered. He was a victim. So why did she keep picturing the Tree Man’s face when the light caught it from the left to show a determined viciousness?

  ‘Forensics found a rug which had been drenched in accelerants and lit,’ she said reluctantly.