The action and desperation emphasized how old and vulnerable the girl’s aunt had become. Her age had finally caught up with her. Before she’d seemed young – strong. Obviously her initial calm over the dual murders had been from shock and now the full implications were hitting her she was frightened. In her pale eyes Joanna read real fear. Hannah was frightened of these killings. Frightened for herself. It served to convince her that Hannah Lockley knew more than she was saying. Impulsively Joanna touched her hand. ‘Would you like a WPC to stay with you for a few days?’
‘That won’t be necessary, my dear. Ruthie will be back soon. She can take care of me.’
Inwardly Joanna groaned. This was not helping, this self-deception. ‘Look – I’m sorry,’ Joanna said. ‘I’m sorry. But we’ve heard nothing from your niece. And as each day passes ...’
Hannah Lockley’s eyes widened and Joanna found she couldn’t complete the sentence. It would be too cruel. So instead she asked the old lady if she would be prepared to visit Hardacre again.
As expected Ruthie’s aunt resisted the idea. ‘I don’t understand why you want me to go back. There’s nothing there. Nothing that will help us find Ruthie. She’s gone away.’
Mike spoke for the first time. ‘Where?’
It only added to Hannah Lockley’s distress. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I don’t know.’
And Joanna cursed these confidentiality laws that prevented her talking about Ruthie’s pregnancy. But if Ruthie had spoken to anyone about it surely it would have been to the aunt? She scrutinized the old lady’s face as she asked her again to return to the farm.
‘For what?’ the old lady snapped. ‘Your officers have been right through the place. There’s nothing there. Nothing.’
‘Please.’ It was all Joanna could do, to plead. ‘I’m sorry. I know it must be hard, going back and I can’t really be sure it will be of benefit but your brother-in- law and your nephew have been dead for four days, your niece missing for at least that amount of time and quite frankly we’re no nearer finding the killer than we were on Tuesday morning. We need all the help we can get, Miss Lockley. Please.’
The old lady stared right through her and Joanna cast back in her mind for some phrase, something she must have said to give the old lady that frozen look but her mind drew a blank.
So she continued to coax.
‘I know it’s a bit of a long shot.’ She tried to smile but her lips felt stiff and her mind was still occupied with the old lady’s expression.
At last Hannah shrugged her shoulders and moved towards the front door, her face mask-like. This time they noted that Hannah locked the front door but she still left the key under the mat and Joanna knew it was a superstitious act. She was leaving the key out for her niece. That was when she was certain that it had been her mention of Ruthie that had upset the old lady. It had been the phrase, missing for at least that amount of time.
She followed the old lady as she marched down the path with something of her old spirit, as though the act of leaving the key would, somehow, conjure up her missing ‘daughter’. Hannah even managed to give Korpanski a cocky smile as he closed the gate after them. ‘I haven’t got a telly or a video to steal, Sergeant. And that’s what I believe all the burglars are after these days. So it’s no use your nagging me about leaving the key out.’
It was a return of the old fighting spirit.
Joanna tried to make conversation as they covered the few hundred yards between the cottage and the farmhouse.
‘We called round to see Dave Shackleton this morning.’
Hannah halted in her tracks. ‘Whatever for?’
‘We had the idea Ruthie might be with him.’
‘Well you were wasting your time, Inspector Piercy. She was far too good for him. She wouldn’t have gone there.’
‘We have to follow lots of leads,’ Mike said without emotion. ‘Some of them seem long shots and then hey presto, they have some bearing on the case.’
Hannah’s features sharpened as she returned Mike’s comment. ‘Well that was too much of a “long shot”, Sergeant. She wouldn’t have gone there, with that old lady keeping court in that tiny little place. No bigger than the henhouse at Hardacre. Penniless that boy is. Penniless. He would have loved to have married our Ruthie. Get his legs stuck under the table at Hardacre. Hah. He wouldn’t be driving milk tankers for a living then. Ruthie was too proud ...’ she finished and moved her eyes upwards.
They had arrived.
All eyes turned on the long, low building, with its stained-glass window porch catching the evening light at an angle, throwing gleams of blue and red in bright, bizarre patterns along the side of the building.
The front door was ajar, like before.
The day was still hot with nothing more threatening than a very distant rumble of thunder. Mike mopped his forehead. Joanna knew he was still wishing the fine weather would end. With vague pleasure she watched him loosen his tie.
The dryness had filled the air with dust, red and pungent with cow dung and fertilizer, pollens chased by dandelion clocks in the very lightest of breezes. It was as though the entire panorama thirsted. It was so bone dry. And now even Joanna could join Mike and yearn for a return to damp, cool normality. Not the tropics but the Moorlands.
Hannah Lockley stumbled on the steps, falling heavily on her hands. Mike picked her up and dusted her down.
She was nervous.
The porch was filled with swarms of black, noisy flies, buzzing around the coloured glass, a hot parody of the cool, pure interior of a church. The flies seemed a symbol of pollution, of evil. Of decay. It was a relief to leave it for the dark shade of the farmhouse.
But on the threshold Hannah seemed to halt again and she grappled behind her, perhaps to reassure herself that the two police officers were still there. That she was not alone.
Once in she exhaled in a noisy spurt. ‘It all looks so ordinary,’ she said, grimly smiling. ‘Nothing here at all.’
Now she seemed to have regained her confidence she moved quickly around the room, muttering to herself and touching pieces of furniture. A chair back, the dusty ledge on the corner of the dresser, a finger trailing along the cheap print of a vase of silk flowers. She opened a cupboard or two and found nothing but crockery and yellowing newspapers. She picked one out and turned to face them both, holding it loosely in her hands. ‘I don’t understand,’ she said. ‘This is just paper for lighting the fire. What exactly is it that you want me to find?’
‘Anything,’ Joanna said. ‘Anything. Just comb through the house and use your eyes. You must have known Hardacre Farm over the years. If you see anything changed, even an ornament in the wrong place, an object missing, however insignificant, we want you to tell us.’
Hannah’s pale eyes moved away from Joanna’s face. ‘You expect too much from me,’ she murmured.
But she did wander around the room more slowly now and as she touched the back of one of the armchairs her face suddenly went chalk white. ‘This was Aaron’s chair,’ she said, fighting to keep her voice steady. ‘He always sat here. At the end of a long evening he would rest,’ her fingers were plucking the antimacassar, ‘quiet like. No great talker was our Aaron.’
Her eyes dropped to a small, cane covered stool a huge cushion smothering the top. ‘And this was where Jack would sit, near the fire, hugging his knees.’ She gave a dry laugh. ‘Fond of the fire was Jack.’ She gave a long sigh.
Mike cleared his throat noisily.
Hannah took no notice but stood, swaying, in the centre of the room, her eyes half closed, as though she was dreaming the family were all still here, sitting round the fire as they must have done on numerous occasions, night after night, for years, the three of them, each in their particular seat. Joanna glanced at the small, pink armchair with a woollen, patchwork blanket draped over it. No need to ask who had sat there.
She waited for the old lady to resume her activity.
Hannah approached the black, l
ead grate, her hands outstretched, as though a fire was still lit and she too glanced across at the pink chair. ‘Before it was Ruthie’s,’ she said softly, ‘it used to belong to Paulette, my sister. She sat in there. The night before she died,’ she said, ‘my sister was sat there.’
Then her face grew sharp as she glanced across the floor. ‘A rug is missing,’ she said briskly. Joanna was tempted to comfort the old woman, loop her arm around her shoulders. Maybe this was too cruel, to drag the old woman back to Hardacre, to the scene of happiness, contentment, domesticity – and then murder. ‘There was a burn on the rug,’ she said finally, ‘we sent it for forensic analysis.’
The old lady nodded as though she understood it all, the thorough procedures of the police investigation as well as Joanna’s own, personal reaction to it. ‘Jack,’ she said without further explanation. She sank down on the shabbier of the two chairs. ‘There’s nothing of them left, is there? I mean I don’t believe in ghosts. But no presence at all? I can’t feel them here. They’ve gone.’
Joanna shook her head and the old lady continued. ‘Nothing – of – them – left.’ She spoke the words slowly, deliberately, as though to convince herself of the truth that lay behind them.
‘Miss Lockley...’ Joanna hesitated, hating to push the old lady further but Hannah seemed to understand. ‘You want me to carry on?’
‘Please.’ Joanna led the way towards the kitchen. ‘Everywhere, Miss Lockley, in your own time.’ It was a polite phrase.
So Hannah Lockley browsed through the kitchen now, muttering to herself as she opened cupboards, closing doors. Her pale eyes bored into the darkest corners, her face twitching with all the nervousness of a mouse. Eventually she stopped right in front of Joanna. ‘There’s nothing here, Inspector,’ she said steadily. ‘Whatever you thought might hold some clue, there’s nothing here. All is as it was. Apart from the fact that they’ve whitewashed a wall in the pantry.’
Joanna’s eyes swept around the room but she was forced to agree. It was simply a shabby old farmhouse. There was no clue to the tragedy that had so recently taken place. Nothing.
She held her hand out. ‘Upstairs?’
Obediently Hannah Lockley opened the door that led to the dark, narrow staircase, Mike and Joanna following closely behind. She moved quickly from room to room, deftly searching the cupboards, the drawers, beneath the beds. It was only when she entered Ruthie Summers’ room that she displayed any emotion.
She sank down on the bed, overcome. And Joanna realized that out of the three close relatives who had lived here Hannah had only really cared for Ruthie. The murders had affected her less than the disappearance of her niece.
Hannah’s hands were across her face. ‘What an awful thing,’ she said. ‘If my poor sister had known it would all come to this.’ Her pale eyes met Joanna’s through her fingers. ‘I’m so glad she didn’t,’ she said simply.
She scanned the shabby interior before speaking again. ‘Where on earth can the girl be?’ And her face looked even more strained, but hurt too, confused and deeply puzzled. But when she stood up a moment later she left the room without a backwards glance as though the empty bedroom represented too much pain.
The three of them rattled back down the stairs and returned to the living room, Hannah standing at the foot of the stairs, her back against the door, almost on the exact spot where Jack Summers had died. Joanna glanced around hopelessly and for the first time took careful note of the room.
Four doors led from this room. The first was the front door from where the killer had fired the two fatal shots. The second led to the staircase, the third to the kitchen. But there was a fourth door. Joanna knew it led to a tiny, cold pantry, stone-flagged floor, lined with shelves stacked with aged tins of outdated food and rows of empty jars. But still she opened the door and peered inside. The wind whistled through a few airbricks and there was a faint, musty smell of old food never quite cleaned away. In here there were signs of Ruthie’s industry, jars of pickles and jams, a few pots and pans, more yellowing newspapers. And yet it was not so dusty or so dirty. Hannah Lockley was right. The back wall had been freshly whitewashed, recently. It struck her as odd that this was the only decorating that had been done in the entire farmhouse, probably in the last ten years. Maybe even longer. Possibly not even since the mistress of the house had died and her role had been filled by her six-year-old daughter, with such tragic results.
And the longer Joanna stood there and stared at the wall the more bizarre this particular piece of decorating seemed.
The back wall of the pantry?
No one had touched the other two walls. They were marked, painted cream, showing obvious signs of damp and age. There was dust on the floor.
Brick dust, cement.
Mike was standing so close behind her she could feel his breath on her neck. And he too was staring at the wall. And she knew they were both thinking the same thought. She turned to meet his eyes, and caught his mood.
Almost in a dream she put her hand out and gently tapped the whitewashed bricks.
Hollow.
Hannah was framed in the doorway. ‘This is just the ...’ Then she too was staring at the wall. ‘That’s funny,’ she said faintly. ‘That’s very funny.’
But she did not share the two police officers’ suspicions.
‘Get her out of here,’ Joanna murmured over her shoulder. ‘Get her out and a couple of strong officers with a lump hammer in!’
But now Hannah must have heard – or sensed – something. She reached past Mike to pull at Joanna’s arm. ‘What are you doing?’ There was rising panic in her voice. ‘What are you doing? You won’t find anything in here.’ She made an attempt at a laugh. ‘This is a larder. Jams, pickles.’ Even she did not believe that there was nothing in there.
‘I’m sorry,’ Joanna said. ‘But you’ll have to leave now. Please. Someone will take you back to your cottage.’
The old lady stood stone still, and stared at the whited wall.
Ten minutes later the shelves had been cleared, the jam jars neatly stacked along the kitchen formica. Joanna grabbed the lump hammer from Police Constable David Timmis and smashed it hard against the wall, loosening the first brick. Then she used it to tap. Hollow here, dull there. Flies buzzed around the pantry as though sensing a new source of nutrient. Joanna waved her arms around her head, oppressed by the rising sense of foreboding, claustrophobia, the irritating insects.
Mike had stopped tapping and was watching her with incredulous, wide eyes. There was no need for either of them to speak.
His face was very close to hers. It was a very confined space. A few whitened bricks between them. All his strength was displayed as he swung his lump hammer and the bricks jumped. A shower of dry cement powdered both their faces. His fingers scrabbled to remove the first brick.
There was a space behind the true wall, a space created by the building of a false wall. Dust settled on both their faces, their hair, their skin, their hands. Silently Timmis handed them both a mask and they continued bashing at the wall.
Behind them they heard Hannah Lockley in the living room. ‘I’m staying,’ she was saying. ‘I’m going nowhere. You brought me here. I’ve a right to ...’
Arms swung.
The blows were delivered with all the grim determination of prize boxers in the ring. Joanna and Mike removed more bricks until there was room for her to put her hand inside and grapple with something dry and boney ... She sucked in a long breath.
She had found Ruthie Summers.
Korpanski flashed his torch inside the gap. Wrapped in a black plastic sheet, one hand resting against her hiding place, dried skin, almost leathery parchment. A strange scent, flies. Black clouds of flies.
She left the tiny larder to gulp fresher air from the sitting room, stared out through the glass porch to the embers of the summer sun.
How could anything so horrible have happened here, in this rural heaven?
It took her a few minutes to reco
ver her composure. She must now reassemble a second SOCO team and summon Matthew again to the farmhouse.
She sat down and waited in the sitting room, facing the sole survivor of the family. Neither said a word. Hannah sat, motionless.
She knew.
Mike stood and blocked the larder door. The heap of damaged bricks bore testament to what lay behind it.
Matthew arrived at almost the same time as Sergeant Barraclough. He looked fresh and clean in a blue laundered shirt that showed a pleasing expanse of muscular brown arm. He gave her a quizzical, twisted smile before entering the pantry.
By now the two PCs had removed enough bricks to uncover the entire plastic bag and once WPC Dawn Critchlow had forcibly removed Hannah Lockley to the Incident caravan and Barra had taken photographs of the body in its tomb they carried it into the sitting room and laid it on the floor.
The plastic had formed a winding sheet from which one hand had escaped. It had been this which Joanna must have touched. She shuddered and watched Matthew finger the rope that had been knotted around the mummy shape. ‘It looks like baling twine,’ he observed quietly, before slicing through it.
‘We might just get a couple of good palm prints from the plastic.’ Barra spoke steadily. He was, as always, in full control.
Matthew slit open the bag and clouds of bluebottles buzzed out noisily, angry at being disturbed in their perpetuation of the species. Lazy white grubs crawled from beneath beige, parchment skin.
Whatever Ruthie Summers had been, a small, slim, pretty girl, singing as she herded the cows, singing as she took aim to shoot the crows, now she was advancing in putrefaction, an object of revulsion.
Joanna muttered a swift, silent apology. This girl had not earned her suspicion. It had not been she who had fired at her father and brother. It could not have been. She was innocent of the crime, a victim herself. She must have been dead for the entire month of her disappearance. Joanna struggled to avert her eyes from the mummy shape, but it was hard. The object repulsed yet drew the gaze. Even when she was staring across the room she was conscious of it. Mike was studiously staring out of the window and she knew his emotions were the same as hers. Only Matthew showed no revulsion, yet, only fascination as he busied himself with his work, studying the hands, the hair, the face. Joanna almost vomited. The face.
Scaring Crows Page 18