Miss Pink Investigates- Part Four

by Gwen Moffat

‘It takes time to get the map out of your sack,’ Miss Pink pointed out. ‘But she could have had a biro in a pocket, and she whipped off her hat …’

  ‘And he saw her do it and killed her.’ Gibson raised an eyebrow.

  Rosie said reprovingly, ‘Dwayne wasn’t about to kill because he was out with an under-age girl – which is the worst thing we’ve got on him, and which she probably knew about already. Anyway, the kids deny the relationship.’

  Miss Pink ignored that. ‘If he’d seen her write something on the hat he’d have destroyed the hat.’ Her eyes glazed. ‘The hat went in the water with her – like the camera and binoculars. They’d sink. They could well be in the underground caverns in the big quarry.’

  ‘Dwayne lent his Land Rover to Blamire,’ Gibson said, and they all stared at him.

  ‘To go to the firing range with Isa,’ Miss Pink said weakly. ‘And that’s in the opposite direction to the Closewater path. Besides …’

  ‘Yes?’

  Miss Pink looked at Eleanor. ‘What would Blamire have against Phoebe?’

  Eleanor shrugged. She was running out of steam, as was everyone else. It had been a long day. Gibson said, ‘What’s any of this got to do with Isa? We know she was murdered; are you implying there’s a connection between her death and this old lady who drowned?’

  ‘She fell and drowned,’ Eleanor corrected.

  ‘Or was pushed,’ Miss Pink murmured.

  Chapter Sixteen

  The moor below Scoat Pike was already browning in the heat wave but Rosie still managed to find the wet patches. Retreating yet again with mud over the tops of her trainers, she fell in beside Miss Pink, eyeing the other’s dry boots with amazement.

  ‘How do you know where to walk?’

  ‘I follow the path.’

  ‘What path?’

  ‘Keep behind me.’

  They were on their way to Closewater. Persuaded by the evidence of the hat, by the possibility of a connection between the two deaths, Gibson had decided that Rosie should duplicate Phoebe’s route. Miss Pink had volunteered to be the guide and he had agreed: ‘She knows the way and she’ll see it through a wrinklie’s eyes,’ he told Rosie. ‘You can’t; you’ll go too fast and miss things.’

  He was right. Next morning Rosie had started out at the trot before they reached Sleylands although she did ask Miss Pink if she minded and the other had agreed absently. She was intent on Swinburn chugging across the pastures on his tractor in the direction of his awful tip. When Miss Pink’s attention returned to the hill she saw that Rosie was no longer running for which she was thankful; a sprained ankle could have meant postponement of the day’s activities. She came up with Rosie who had stopped by some rocks and was trying to control her breathing.

  ‘You’re not even panting!’ The girl was astonished.

  ‘Old guide’s pace.’ It was dismissive. ‘Is Mr Gibson going to ask Paxton and Blamire where they were last Sunday week? And who was driving Paxton’s Land Rover?’

  ‘Probably.’ Rosie was cagey – and resentful about the gradient. ‘He could be waiting for a report on this track. I’ll be telling him that no Land Rover ever came up here; it’s desperate for anyone on foot.’

  ‘And he’d have bogged down on top,’ Miss Pink said as they continued, Rosie wondering where the bogs were and quickly discovering them. By the time they came out above Closewater the sergeant had learned the first rule of mountain etiquette: that the leader of the party goes first, but it had taken her that long to work out that Miss Pink was the leader. Rosie was the novice.

  Salient features were pointed out to her and she tried to concentrate, to see what her companion was seeing and endeavour to interpret those images as they might relate to the progress of another old lady a week ago, and who, shortly after she reached this point, was to die violently.

  There were cars parked at the head of the lake but none visible on the track to Gowk Pass. ‘I was here the following day,’ Miss Pink said. ‘By that time a Mountain Rescue Land Rover had gone up and covered any tracks’ – a long pause – ‘any tracks left by a vehicle the previous day.’

  ‘Followed exactly the same line?’

  ‘Yes. I paid particular attention although at the time I wasn’t concerned with wheel tracks but with the orchids.’

  ‘Orchids?’ Rosie had a vision of hothouse blooms, of corsages in old movies.

  Miss Pink explained as they climbed. The verges were now imprinted with a multitude of tyre tracks left by trucks, quads, mountain bikes. They came to a steepening with loose stones like a scree slope where they diverged and Miss Pink halted at ruts cut deep in the peat. ‘I suppose we could try to transplant,’ she murmured. ‘Now who was it proposed that?’

  ‘This was where the orchids were?’

  ‘Of course. There’s one left.’ They moved closer. ‘You see: very small flowers but unmistakably an orchid.’

  ‘I’ll take your word for it. Sorry! I was thinking of those big multicoloured jobs that come in a see-through box with a bow.’

  ‘There are wild ones similar, but smaller. They’re bee orchids.’ Miss Pink looked from the gouged peat to the slope of the hill above. ‘She couldn’t have missed this place; she’d have taken photographs. Or did she find the Land Rover bogged down, the occupants gone for help? But there’s no sign of the big holes left by a vehicle that had dug itself in.’

  ‘I think these trucks got through without sticking.’ Rosie had experience of police four-by-fours.

  They surveyed the slope. A few hundred yards above them the track described a sharp elbow between banks. The surface was pale: another steep gradient of large loose stones. ‘He’d have had difficulty there,’ Rosie said. ‘And there’s no way round, it’s too craggy.’

  ‘She was a fanatic about the environment. After she photographed this’ – Miss Pink gestured to the devastation – ‘she could well have taken shots of the truck – if one were stuck up there. On the other hand it could have been moving round that hairpin and she saw the number through her binoculars and noted it. How does that sound?’

  ‘She definitely made a note of it at some time. Who was driving the rescue truck that came up here next day, the one that followed the same line?’

  ‘Blamire.’ She went on slowly: ‘Of course he might not have noticed the orchids, by Monday there were only one or two left.’

  They climbed to the stony elbow. Bedrock in the centre of the track was marked with long raw scratches, confirming that vehicles had been forced to keep to the track. On the top of Gowk Pass they came on a Toyota Land Cruiser, without occupants and locked. There was an RSPB sticker on the windscreen, and Rosie said that it had a Yorkshire registration. ‘Where are the birds?’ she asked. ‘I’ve only heard the cuckoo and skylarks.’

  ‘You’re learning,’ Miss Pink said absently, thinking of Phoebe. ‘There are others around: divers on the tarns, merlin, peregrines perhaps in the quarry.’ She frowned at that.

  ‘What?’

  ‘If she did catch up with him after coming on those orchids she’d have been blazing with rage. I would be. And if she told him she had taken photographs … and refused to give up the camera …’

  Rosie shook her head. ‘What’s the penalty for destroying wild flowers? Come on! You don’t kill a person just to escape a fine.’

  ‘He writes books about the fells; he’s got an image to protect.’

  ‘So you’re thinking it was Blamire in Dwayne’s Land Rover, and Phoebe confronted him about some squashed orchids.’

  ‘Suppose Isa was with him?’

  ‘Even if Phoebe saw them screw – making it – he wouldn’t kill her just for that, surely? And then put the body in the beck, don’t forget.’

  They walked on, descending gently as the track improved on the Borascal side, less rocky, dark lines visible in the distance where former dalesmen had obtained their fuel supplies. They went slowly, Rosie starting to take more interest in her surroundings, learning the difference between violet
s and butterwort, trying to learn bird calls, using her ears. ‘And that’ – Miss Pink turned – ‘is the Land Cruiser coming down.’

  They weren’t concerned, paying more attention to the quarry which was now visible below, only the tops of the sheer walls showing but those impressive enough, hinting at the hidden depths.

  The Land Cruiser approached and at that moment the walkers were on a sunken section with grassy banks on either side. Calmly, automatically, they parted, but the next steps were upwards, the grass was dry and polished, and Miss Pink’s knees less flexible than she would have wished. She slipped, grabbed at the bank and stumbled back into the path of the truck. It stopped dead.

  Rosie jumped down. People called anxiously. Miss Pink swore, flushed with embarrassment.

  Apologies and assurances over they exchanged pleasantries. The bird watchers had seen a pair of short-eared owls and found a ring ouzel’s nest. They passed, leaving the walkers to follow at their own pace, Miss Pink silent.

  ‘You didn’t hurt yourself?’ Rosie was diffident.

  ‘Only my pride.’ Miss Pink stopped and looked back. ‘Suppose Phoebe had passed the Land Rover because it was stuck, or stopped for whatever reason, had seen Isa and spoken her mind –’

  ‘Rather vulgar of her.’ Rosie grinned.

  ‘Spoken her mind about the orchids – and maybe other things as they came to mind, and she walked on, and they came down behind her in the truck and she jumped for the bank and fell back under the wheels?’

  ‘She wasn’t run over. She drowned.’

  ‘He could have hit her a glancing blow with the wing. He could have thought she was dead.’

  ‘That would be an accident.’

  ‘He could have run her down deliberately, in a fit of temper, thought she was dead, taken her in the ‘Rover to the quarry and dropped her in the beck. I’ll show you.’

  It was as she remembered it and the features fulfilled all the requirements: the level green path just wide enough for a vehicle (and faintly marked by broad tyres), the locked gate over which a small person could have been lifted easily, particularly with two people on hand, the terrible slope that dropped to a gaping black pit below the waterfalls and from which, even with the water low, came the roar of cascades.

  ‘The camera will be down there,’ Miss Pink said, ‘but with the film pulled out. And the binoculars.’

  Rosie admitted that it could have happened that way; it could explain the registration number on the hat, how the body came to be in the beck. ‘But if you’re right, then it was murder. He could have struck her by accident originally. And even if he drove at her deliberately, he didn’t kill her then. But when he went on to put her down there alive’ – she shuddered, staring at the convex slope that plunged like a polished slide into the depths – ‘I just hope she stayed unconscious.’

  ‘How do you know she was wasn’t conscious when he put her in there?’

  ‘Christ! Let’s get out of here.’ Rosie turned back to the gate and the security of level grass.

  ‘When I was at this spot on Monday,’ Miss Pink said, ‘first Jean came along and then Blamire.’

  ‘What was Jean doing here?’

  ‘She was with the rescue team. They were searching for Phoebe, and the rest of them were up there on Blaze Fell.’ She pointed. ‘He could have sent Jean down to find out who I was and what I was doing, and then became too anxious and came down himself. Jean was bothered about my getting into difficulties in the quarry but he could have been worried that I might come across some evidence of what had happened the day before.’ She gasped. ‘It was Blamire who mentioned the orchids first. They were on his mind, particularly as they related to old ladies. Someone had made an issue of them, and that could only have been Phoebe.’

  They walked side by side on the soft turf. ‘There’s no evidence,’ Rosie said. ‘That’s the problem. Gibson might consider it as an interesting theory but he’ll say there isn’t a shred of proof.’

  ‘It goes further.’ Miss Pink was unmoved. ‘Isa was with him.’ She turned to Rosie, astonished. ‘Perhaps Isa was driving! Whatever, she thought Phoebe was dead so she helped him get rid of the body, but after the post-mortem, when it was learned that Phoebe drowned and so she was alive when she was pushed in the water, her nerve broke. She panicked and became a threat. So she had to be silenced. On second thoughts it had to be Blamire driving. If it had been Isa he’d have had no qualms about saying so.’

  ‘I’m going to lose my job.’ Dwayne was furious. ‘You coming to my workplace and the boss here. He took me back the once, seeing as it were you hauled me to town, but he’s not going to stand for it twice.’

  The police had found him removing slates from the old outhouse in the garden at Blind Keld. Men were at work inside the house and Birkett was glowering from an upper window.

  Sewell asked, almost casually, ‘Where were you yesterday week?’

  ‘At home.’ He didn’t take time to think about it.

  ‘That was quick,’ Sewell said.

  ‘It were Sunday; I don’t work Sundays.’

  ‘Who were you with?’

  ‘No one.’

  ‘So there are no witnesses to confirm that you didn’t leave your house.’

  Dwayne was still, smelling a trap, and indeed he resembled an animal, a fine young specimen. He was aware of Sewell’s scrutiny and preened himself.

  ‘I coulda been with a woman.’

  ‘Where did you take her?’

  Dwayne glanced at the house. ‘Can’t remember.’

  ‘A week ago? You had a woman on Sunday and you can’t – Who was she’?’

  ‘I’d rather not say.’

  ‘You don’t know where you took her and you don’t know who she was –’

  ‘I didna say that!’ He hesitated. ‘I have a lot of women.’

  ‘That’s a lie.’

  ‘No, it in’t! I go to discos in town, pick up girls –’

  ‘We’re not talking about a quick screw in the toilets, we’re talking about bringing women here or taking them on the fells, like last Sunday.’

  There was the ghost of a smile on the lad’s lips. ‘Maybe I did at that; I pick up hikers sometimes, give ’em a lift like.’

  He was too confident and Gibson decided it was time to take a hand, go for the jugular. ‘Like giving a girl a lift over Gowk Pass from Closewater,’ he said.

  Dwayne looked away. Gibson went on quietly, driving it home. ‘Yesterday week. Sunday: the day the old lady went hiking and was killed. Why aren’t you looking at me, Dwayne?’

  He raised his head, blinking, licking his lips. He whispered something.

  ‘What was that?’ Gibson was politely curious, not unfriendly.

  ‘I said I were home.’

  ‘No. You were seen.’

  ‘Where?’

  Gibson looked at Sewell who produced the denim hat from the pocket of his chinos. He held it out: right side up and front foremost. ‘Recognize it?’ Gibson asked.

  ‘No.’ Dwayne shook his head jerkily, recoiling a little although his feet didn’t move.

  ‘ “Alaska”,’ Gibson read, and waited. The other swallowed and his eyes wandered.

  ‘It was Phoebe Metcalf’s.’

  ‘So?’ He was no longer a sexy hunk but a frightened boy.

  Sewell turned the hat over and they watched his face. It was as if he felt himself forced to look at the figures exposed. Recognition was followed by blank incomprehension before his face smoothed out.

  ‘Whose number is it?’ Gibson asked.

  ‘Mine.’ He couldn’t deny it; his Land Rover was in the yard on the other side of the wall.

  ‘The Sunday she was killed your Land Rover was on Gowk Pass.’ Dwayne stared at him, turning sullen. ‘What did you do, Dwayne? Run her down? Push her in the beck?’

  ‘It weren’t me.’

  ‘Who was it?’

  ‘Blamire.’

  ‘You were out with Blamire?’

  ‘No,
no, t’were Isa with him. He took the ‘Rover. I were in me bed – no, I were working here; he come and took it like he always did. They left his van and the MG. They come back in the afternoon, returned the ‘Rover.’ His voice rose, starting to shrill. ‘I told you all this before. I don’t know nothing about Phoebe; on my heart I swear I don’t know what happened to her. I knew she drowned like, we all knew, but not that he – Blamire killed un?’

  Sewell was left to watch him, to make sure he didn’t use a phone, and that no one went near his Land Rover until it could be impounded. Transport was summoned and more hands called for, while Gibson went to Borascal cursing himself for sending Rosie on the hill. Then he rationalized that she wasn’t wasting time; at some point it would have been necessary to retrace Phoebe’s route that Sunday.

  The situation had changed, like one of those pictures where the mind’s eye shifts and you see things differently. Now, with Blamire driving the Land Rover that day, Isa with him, and the registration number being recorded by Phoebe, it was possible that Miss Pink was right and Isa’s murder might be explained by Phoebe’s death. Always accepting that Dwayne wasn’t out to frame Blamire. It was essential to hear Blamire’s version of the events of that Sunday. He wondered if Gemma would confirm Dwayne’s story. The lad hadn’t mentioned her. Out of chivalry? Fear, more like.

  It was a short drive to the village. There was no time to formulate questions, even though he was resolved to ask nothing pertinent until Sewell arrived. His purpose now was to isolate the Blamires from the outside world and to keep the couple under his eye so that they couldn’t communicate between themselves. And there was Gemma.

  Borascal looked as normal as it would ever look: the Fat Lamb open but with no one outside, purple rock plants draping pale walls, a bank of cardinal poppies, lavender wisteria, a red cat sprawled in the road.

  Someone was singing in the Blamires’ kitchen: Sinatra on ‘Strangers in the Night’. Gibson waited until it finished, enjoying the man’s timing, staring sightlessly at the lilacs alive with bees. What was that about Sinatra and the Mafia?

  The song ended. ‘Hello?’ he called.