Scaring Crows

by Priscilla Masters

  Mike nodded and allowed himself a broad grin. This was the point in any murder investigation when the pulses quickened and the nose began to twitch. They were starting to discover things.

  Joanna sat back, surveyed the tanker driver and decided to play the game a little dirty. ‘Mr Shackleton,’ she said, her face a blank mask, ‘I have to ask you this, you understand.’ Shackleton nodded – apprehensively.

  ‘Did you touch the gun?’

  He looked affronted. ‘No. I did not. I know enough about police work not to touch the murder weapon.’

  ‘So if your fingerprints had been found on it you would be very surprised?’ she asked innocently.

  Shackleton studied her face carefully. ‘You’re bluffing,’ he said. ‘But if my fingerprints were to be found on the gun I can tell you. I have handled it more than once. Me and Ruthie would go and shoot crows sometimes.’

  The image was wrong. The dairy maid, singing as she herded the cows. Shooting crows? Joanna sat up.

  ‘Shooting crows, Mr Shackleton?’

  Shackleton was unperturbed. ‘It’s just a way of letting off steam.’

  But the mention of Ruthie Summers brought the subject of the questioning round neatly.

  ‘Do you have any idea where Ruthie might be?’

  ‘I wish I did,’ Shackleton said hoarsely. ‘I really wish I did. I’d give anything to see her again.’ And he stumbled to his feet, knocking his chair over, spending ages attempting to right it.

  Anything so the two police officers could not see his tears.

  But they could.

  Chapter Eleven

  9.45 a.m.

  Joanna watched him shuffle out before turning to Mike. ‘So what do you think?’

  ‘He could have shot them both before starting his milk round, murdered or abducted Ruthie Summers.’

  ‘But why, for goodness sake?’

  Mike shrugged. ‘Hostile family, reluctant girlfriend? I mean Ruthie was never going to leave Jack behind, was she?’

  Joanna glanced down at the photograph in her hand. ‘I can’t believe that she would have condoned her lover slaughtering her father and brother before setting off into the sunset with him.’

  ‘No?’ He watched her with rising impatience. ‘You’re judging her whole personality on the strength of a picture. What if she wasn’t sensitive or caring? What if she was a nasty piece of work who argued with her father and brother one morning and blasted the pair of them with an available shotgun? After all she would have been the one who would have known it was there, whether it was loaded or not. And plenty of people have seen her fire it.’

  Joanna still felt compelled to fight Ruthie’s corner. ‘But everyone says Ruthie was gentle, pleasant, good natured. She cared for Jack for years, didn’t she? No one has said anything about her being irritated by looking after him, just guilty.’

  ‘Well guilt can mount up, Joanna. She did cause his injuries in the first place. Maybe she just got pissed off with looking after him one day. She might even have got frightened. He did have some nasty habits with boxes of matches. After all. It was all her fault.’

  ‘It was an accident,’ Joanna protested.

  ‘How do we know? No one saw what happened all those years ago. And Jack was too young to tell. What if she lost her temper with him and went for him. Plenty of reason for guilt in that case.’

  ‘She was a child of six.’

  Mike watched her steadily. ‘Funnier things have happened,’ he said. ‘Children can do peculiar things, in temper. And don’t you psychologists have a special name for it?’

  ‘Sibling rivalry.’

  ‘Yeah well. The point I’m trying to make is that we don’t really know anything about Ruthie Summers. We’ve never met her. Everything we know about her is seen through someone else’s eyes.’

  ‘I suppose so.’ She hesitated before bringing up the next point. ‘Why do you think Aaron and Jack covered for Ruthie’s absence?’

  Mike shrugged. ‘Who knows? It’s anybody’s guess. Maybe it’s simply coincidence that no one saw her.’

  And again she conceded the point.

  ‘OK,’ Mike said. ‘So let’s move on and start looking at someone else apart from the wretched girl. What about the man walking his dog?’

  ‘I’d be more interested,’ Joanna said slowly, ‘if it wasn’t for the time difference. Aaron and Jack

  Summers were shot early in the morning, round about six a.m. He was presumably around at ten, four hours later.’

  ‘So if he’s completely innocent why hasn’t he come forward?’

  Joanna tapped her pencil on the side of the desk. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘Unless ...’

  ‘He doesn’t read newspapers or watch television? Pull the other one,’ Mike said scornfully. ‘Everyone must know all about the shootings. There have been notices up everywhere, headlines in the local papers, local radio every hour and pieces on the TV. He must know all about it.’

  Joanna met Mike’s dark eyes. ‘Are you suggesting there’s a reason why he hasn’t come forward?’

  He nodded.

  ‘Then let’s find out what that reason is.’ She picked up the phone and linked up with the police press officer, shot a few facts down the line and smiled at Mike. ‘Now we sit down and wait,’ she said.

  They heard the announcement on the ten o’clock bulletin. This time complete with description. ‘Police are searching for a man said to be walking an Alsatian dog in the vicinity of Hardacre Farm, where the double murders took place some time early on Tuesday morning. He is said to be a large man who frequents the area, often wearing a T-shirt and Bermuda shorts. They are appealing to this man to come forward as they are anxious to speak to him!

  Joanna sat back, satisfied. ‘So let’s see what this brings in.’ She watched Korpanski with a trace of amusement. He hated inactivity. And his predilection for fancy ties had persisted even through the scorching weather. Today it was smothered in liquorice allsorts. Yesterday it had been Blue Whales. She stretched her arms over her head, yawned and grabbed hold of the bottom of his tie. ‘So what’s with the ties, Korpanski?’ she demanded. ‘You must be roasting hot. Everyone else is working in open necks. Even the uniformed officers.’ She gave him a sideways smile. ‘So who are you trying to impress?’ Korpanski flushed a dull, plum red and wriggled uncomfortably.

  ‘Well let me guess. It won’t be WPC Dawn Critchlow who has legs like milk bottles.’ She decided to tease him further. ‘I simply can’t imagine you with anyone who has legs like milk bottles, Mike.’

  Korpanski cleared his throat and stopped looking at her.

  ‘And Detective Sergeant Hannah Beardmore has been lurking around the Leek police force for at least seven years. I don’t think she’s suddenly decided to awaken your male libido.’

  ‘Shut it, Jo.’

  ‘On the other hand Police Cadet Kitty Sandworth is not much more than seventeen years old. Round about half your age. Mike.’ She paused. This was dangerous territory. ‘And you’re a married man.’

  Korpanski stood up. ‘For goodness sake, Joanna.’

  So she had scored. ‘Quite,’ she said softly. ‘So let’s leave it, shall we?’

  Korpanski inhaled deeply as though he was dragging on a cigarette and Joanna watched him with a little private niggle. She and Korpanski had worked together for almost five years now. Their names had been linked, despite her amour with Matthew. Besides,

  Kitty Sandworth seemed to her a mere child. A nymphet. So why should she feel a prickle of jealousy? Was it because Korpanski had never worn fancy ties for her? She watched him through new eyes and the silence thickened in the stuffy little caravan until Mike cut through it. ‘So what are we going to do for the rest of the day then? Just sit here and talk about ties?’ There was more than a hint of defiance in his voice.

  ‘Oh – I don’t think so.’ Joanna fumbled along her desk top and found the BPAS leaflet. It was a forlorn hope and yet, stubbornly, she clung to it, this blind opti
mism, that somewhere, somehow, they would find Ruthie Summers both alive and innocent.

  ‘Let’s tour some of the local nursing homes and hospitals.’

  As usual Korpanski could read her mind. ‘You still think ...?’

  And to him she could admit it. ‘I want to – very much.’

  12.00 p.m.

  Before they spent the afternoon trawling round the local nursing homes it seemed worth a visit to Ruthie Summers’ doctor. He proved a friendly Chinese man with a wide smile, crooked teeth and amazingly accent-less English. His name was Peter Foo.

  The receptionist ushered them into his surgery and he beamed a welcome. Joanna thought what a reassuring doctor he seemed. Surely Aaron, Jack and Ruth would all have confided in him.

  It seemed not. ‘I’ve got all their notes out,’ Doctor Foo said with one of his broad grins. ‘But I don’t seem to have met them too often. I hadn’t seen Jack for more than four years. And that was for something quite routine that can have had no bearing on the case at all.’

  ‘And Aaron?’ Joanna asked cautiously.

  ‘I was in a difficult position here,’ Doctor Foo glanced at his computer screen. ‘You see according to my records, I received a telephone call from Mr Aaron Summers’ sister-in-law to say he was unwell. She wanted him to consult me.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘I did telephone Mr Summers,’ the doctor said, but regretfully he was not willing to come to the surgery.’ He smiled. ‘He had a very fatalistic view of life, death and disease. Common amongst farmers and country folk but hopelessly out of step with modern, interventionist medicine. In fact it seems unfortunate but I never did see him.’

  ‘You saw the results of the post mortem?’

  The doctor nodded. ‘I did and I was not surprised. From what Miss Lockley had told me I guessed he had a malignancy somewhere. And to be honest, Inspector Piercy, I’m not so sure that his tumour would have been operable anyway. From the size of it he’d had it for quite a while, probably years. He may have taken the wisest decision. For all the wrong reasons, of course.’

  Joanna moved to more sensitive ground. ‘And Ruth Summers?’

  Immediately the doctor’s manner changed. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said awkwardly, ‘but I have spoken to the Medical Defence Union. While both Aaron and Jack Summers are dead and therefore anything I know might have a bearing on their murders, Ruth Summers is, as far as we know, still alive. I can’t reveal any medical detail.’

  ‘She is a potential witness in a murder inquiry,’ Joanna said sharply, ‘as well as being our prime suspect. She has not been seen since the murders. In fact up to now, no one we have questioned seems to have seen her in the last month. We’re very anxious to find her. So anything, anything at all that might help us would be vital to the investigation.’ She decided to cast the dice. ‘Doctor Foo,’ she said earnestly, ‘I’m not interested in knowing all her medical details. I simply want to know one thing. Was she pregnant?’

  The doctor’s eyes flickered.

  Joanna tried again. ‘Look,’ she said, ‘if it’ll help you I’ll explain. If Ruth Summers was pregnant and she was seeking an abortion you just might hold the answer to her whereabouts. She might have seen something on Tuesday morning.’

  The doctor sat still for a moment before picking up the telephone. ‘Let me just speak to the MDU again.’ He covered the mouthpiece. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said with a disarming smile, ‘I’m really not trying to obstruct you in your enquiries. I want to know who murdered two of my patients probably as much as you do. But this confidentiality thing – it’s a minefield. I promise you.’

  ‘It’s OK,’ Joanna said.

  The doctor spoke quickly into the telephone, explaining the circumstances concisely. Two minutes later he replaced the receiver. And his manner now was open and relaxed. ‘She never actually consulted me,’ the doctor said. ‘That was part of the trouble. However I do have something logged here ...’ He flicked the screen to another patient. This time Ruthie Summers, aged twenty-seven, address, Hardacre Farm. ‘Patients can drop urine samples off at the surgery for testing,’ he said. ‘We send them to the path. lab. On June 16th Ruth Summers did in fact leave an early morning specimen of urine at the surgery, giving the date of her last period as May the first.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘It tested positive,’ the doctor said reluctantly. Joanna leant back in her chair. So her hunch had been right. Ruthie Summers had been pregnant. This opened up an array of possibilities. Suicide, an abortion, an escape from the claustrophobia of the farm. And it didn’t need an ‘A’ level in Biology to point out that for Ruthie Summers to be expecting a baby there had to have been a love affair. So not quite the chaste dairy maid.

  She addressed the doctor. ‘Then what happened?’

  ‘We informed her of the test result by telephone and made her an appointment for the ante-natal clinic the following week.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘She didn’t turn up.’

  ‘So then what did you do?’

  The doctor sighed. ‘I rang the farm,’ he said, ‘but I only ever spoke to either Aaron or Jack. They always said Ruthie was out. And ...’

  ‘Because of confidentiality you couldn’t tell them what you were ringing about.’

  The doctor shrugged. ‘That’s right.’

  ‘But what did you think happened to her?’

  The doctor gave a rueful smile. ‘I didn’t think,’ he said. ‘That’s the trouble. I have four thousand patients on my list with only one part-timer to help me. I daresay the midwives will have chased her up. They would normally even call at her home but I really didn’t have time to do anything more. I’m sorry.’

  There was something defensive in his manner. The pleasant Doctor Foo was worrying about his neck on the line. Litigation, a neglected pregnancy. Joanna leant forward. ‘Tell me, Doctor,’ she said and placed the leaflet on the desk, ‘if Ruth Summers had decided to opt for a termination by the BPAS what would happen?’

  ‘The patient has the absolute right to privacy.’

  ‘Even from her own GP?’

  The doctor nodded.

  They called in at a pub for lunch, sitting outside on wooden benches.

  Joanna waited until they were settled with a drink and a plate of sandwiches. ‘I think we’ve found her,’ she said.

  ‘Don’t be too confident.’

  ‘No, I really think she’s in one of the nursing homes run by the BPAS. In fact we’ll check the first one this afternoon and get some of the uniformed lads to ring the local hospitals, just in case something happened and she was admitted.’

  ‘But they’ve already put out a missing persons quest.’

  ‘She could have used a different name.’

  Their first port of call was to a converted Victorian house, pronouncing ‘The Elms Private Nursing Home’ picked out in black lettering on a white painted board.

  They took the car up a drive that was darkened by bending pine trees, and welcomingly cool in the shade. The house was large, bay-windowed and somehow quite forbidding. Joanna sat, mesmerized, in the driving seat, full of hidden fears and old memories. Once, only once, she had thought she must come to a place just like this, to rid herself of what she had imagined she carried, something she had thought of as a hostile, unwelcome foreign body. The prospect of a child had been awful, frightening. For a few days she had worried. And yet it had been nothing. Nothing but worry and guilt, a temporary upset, the doctor had called it. It was only now that she realized the baby she had thought she carried would have been Matthew’s much longed for child. A consolation for the intermittent loss of Eloise. Eloise ... Suddenly weary and depressed she wondered how he was getting on with her.

  Had Ruthie Summers faced such a prospect too? Had she come here, with her suitcase, to dispose of just such a problem?

  The answer hit her like a thunderbolt. Surely not. If Ruthie Summers had been pregnant by Shackleton there would have been no need for an abortion. He was a free man,
wasn’t he? He loved her? So he would have married her. But if it had been Mothershaw’s child she had carried?

  She rang the bell and spoke to a neatly uniformed matron who also produced the confidentiality plea. Joanna pointed out that there was a possibility that Ruthie Summers was a vital witness to a double murder. And confidentiality melted, like chocolate on a hot day.

  Nevertheless The Elms drew a blank as did all of the five other nursing homes used by the BPAS so the journey back to the farm was subdued. Joanna knew there was a significance about Ruthie Summers’ pregnancy but for the life of her she didn’t know what it was. It infuriated her and at the same time frustrated her. Mercifully Mike was silent until they reached the outskirts of the town.

  ‘Mike,’ she said suddenly. ‘Look. We can’t find Ruthie. But we could have a go at speaking to the father of her child.’

  He glanced across at her. ‘So who are we talking about?’ he demanded. ‘Neil Rowan, Shackleton, or ...’ she knew he was watching her out of the corner of his eye, ‘are we talking about that sculptor fellow, the one you’re so fond of visiting on your own early in the morning when I daresay he’s still in his pyjamas.’

  Joanna burst out laughing. This was the old Mike. The jealous Mike, the Mike whose loyalty guarded her like the Dogs of Fo outside Chinese Temples. This Mike she knew. Well.

  ‘Actually,’ she said, still giggling, ‘he wears a rather fetching grey towelling dressing-gown.’

  Mike growled.

  ‘Anyway, I didn’t mean Mothershaw. I was thinking of Shackleton. I think we should call round and speak to him. Who knows,’ she said, ‘we might get lucky. There’s just a chance he’s been hiding Ruthie Summers there all along.’

  Mike grunted but turned the car around and they headed towards the Southern end of town, to the rows of terraced mill workers’ cottages and Victory Street.

  It was a diminutive place, barely bigger than a dolls’ house, one of a row of five. Shackleton’s was the centre one, the height of the bedroom window scarcely six inches above Korpanski’s head.

  They banged on the door and Shackleton himself pulled it open, staring confusedly at the two police officers. ‘I only spoke to you this morning,’ he said. ‘Has something happened? Have you found Ruthie?’