The Corfe Castle Murders (Dorset Crime Book 1)

by Rachel McLean

  The red spots intensified. “Archie and me, we kept our stuff separate. Patrick was in his bedside table.”

  “Did he find anything?” Dennis asked. Lesley gave him another frown.

  Laila shrugged. “I don’t know. I didn’t...”

  Lesley leaned forward. “Have you had a chance to check Archie’s belongings since his death?”

  “I was going to. But when I came home last night, I couldn’t...”

  “I understand,” Lesley said. She looked at the DS. “We’re going to need a forensics team in here.”

  “Gail Hansford’s already at the crime scene.”

  “Surely we have more than one team of CSIs?”

  “There’s one in Weymouth. But...”

  Lesley sighed. They could continue this conversation later. She turned to Laila.

  “So you came upstairs for a second time, and where was Patrick?”

  Laila glanced towards the door leading to the stairs. “On the landing. He knew I was coming.”

  “Was he holding anything? Did you see him move anything?”

  “No.”

  “OK. So you argued with him about the state of your room. What did you do then?”

  Laila’s eyes were bright with tears. “I didn’t kill him, you know. I loved Archie. Love.”

  “I didn’t say you did.”

  “I know what you’re doing. You’re putting together a timeline. Working out my movements.”

  “We just want to know when and how you found him,” Lesley told her.

  “It’s in your interests to cooperate, “Dennis added.

  Lesley gritted her teeth. “Go on,” she said. “Tell us what happened next.”

  “I left the house. I wanted to get away from Patrick. I was angry that Archie had gone off to London early. I just wanted some—”

  “Hang on,” said Lesley. “You said Archie had gone to London early.”

  “He had a meeting on Monday.” Laila’s face clouded over. “Today. Something about funding for the dig.”

  “And he left the cottage to go to London when?”

  “Saturday morning.”

  “Did he normally do this?”

  A shrug. “He sometimes went away at the weekend. But he hates London. He’s got – he had – nowhere to stay there. So I couldn’t see why he’d have left early.”

  “Laila, do you think Archie might have gone to London and then come back here?” Lesley asked.

  “The meeting wasn’t till Monday.”

  “But he went somewhere.”

  The young woman slumped. “Yeah.”

  “Do you know of anywhere he might have gone?”

  “He’s employed by Bristol University. I guess he might have had a flat there, or something. He never mentioned it.”

  Lesley and Dennis exchanged glances. Lesley thought back to the phone conversation she’d had with Johnny Chiles on the way here from the dig site. Johnny had tracked down Archie’s next of kin. Bristol Police would probably be knocking on her door right now.

  “Did Archie tell you he had a family in Bristol?” she asked.

  Laila’s hand stilled on her sleeve. “His parents? I thought they’d died.”

  “Not his parents.”

  Laila shook her head.

  “Archie had a wife in Bristol.” Lesley watched the young woman carefully. “Her name’s Susan.”

  Laila’s head shot up. “He didn’t. That’s a... you’ve got it wrong.”

  “Little girl, too,” said Dennis. His tone was harsh. “Eleven years old.”

  “But...” Laila looked between the two detectives.

  “I’m sorry, Laila,” Lesley said. “But it looks like Archie was lying to you.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  “You didn’t know?” Lesley asked the young woman.

  “He told me he was divorced. Never mentioned a daughter.”

  Lesley narrowed her eyes. They would have to speak to the others in the house, find out if Laila was telling the truth.

  If Laila had known Archie was married and they’d argued about it, then maybe...

  “You mentioned that you and Archie had an argument,” she said.

  “I wanted him to wait until Monday morning to go to London. He had plenty of time, and I’d have given him a lift to the station.” She looked up. “He lets me drive his car. It wasn’t the first time he’s gone away at the weekend. There were meetings with his Dean in Bristol. A visit to a site at Avebury.” She paused. “He was going home to his wife, wasn’t he?”

  The young woman looked like she might cry. Lesley shuffled her feet. In Birmingham, she’d had a bigger team to shield her from the need to do witness interviews. Emotional suspects irritated her.

  “Bristol Police will have visited Mrs Weatherton by now,” Dennis said. “I imagine she’ll be distraught.”

  Laila nodded. “If I’d known...” She rubbed her face with her increasingly damp sleeve. “Eleven years old, you say?”

  Dennis eyed her. “How old did you say you were, Miss Ford?”

  She blinked. “Twenty. Archie thought I was...”

  “You told him you were older?” Lesley asked.

  “I didn’t... they all just assumed.”

  Convenient, thought Lesley. She wondered if Crystal Spiers, as the manager of the team, had known Laila’s real age.

  Lesley tugged at her fingers, making the knuckles crack. She was hungry, and she wanted to track down the other two residents of this cottage before they went AWOL.

  “Let’s get back to yesterday’s events. Did you go straight from the cottage to the dig site?”

  “Yes. It was the only place I could think of to go. I thought maybe if I did some work, distract myself.”

  “Was it normal for members of the team to work alone?”

  “Normally there’s a bunch of us. The four of us, plus some students from Bournemouth Uni. A couple of National Trust volunteers. Maybe if we need a specialist on hand, one of them too.” She rubbed her face. “It changes every day. But yesterday was the first time I’d been alone down there.”

  Except you weren’t alone, thought Lesley. “Describe what happened when you arrived at the site.”

  “It was empty. There was a man further along the field. A dog walker. You’re not supposed to let dogs off their leads on those fields, but I noticed him because his dog was chasing rabbits. Tourist, probably.”

  Lesley glanced at Dennis, who was still writing. Tracking down the dog walker would be a priority.

  “What next?” she asked.

  “I went inside the other tent first, the smaller one. That’s where I’ve been working. with Patrick.” She shivered. “I realised I didn’t have any equipment with me, any tools. We keep it all locked up here. There’s an outhouse.” She gestured towards the back of the cottage.

  “What time was this?”

  Laila’s brow furrowed. She’d lost the colour in her cheeks and her skin was once again almost translucent. “About three, I think?”

  “What did you do next?”

  “I had pins and needles in my feet, I went outside and shook them out. I decided to take a quick look in the big tent and then go to the pub. Lie low for a bit.”

  “So you went to the big tent...”

  A nod. “And he... Archie was in there.” Laila’s voice caught.

  “Describe what you saw.” Dennis pushed his specs up his nose and resumed his note-taking.

  Laila looked from him to Lesley, her eyes welling. “There were flies.” She shuddered. “A tarpaulin. I picked it up. I wish I hadn’t…” She wiped her cheek. “He was facing away from me. His head... “

  She put her hand on the sofa and clawed at the fabric. “I… I knelt down. I grabbed his arm and gave him a shake. But his head… the wound…” She closed her eyes, her hands trembling. “I can’t get it out of my head.”

  “Then what?” snapped Dennis. Lesley eyed him; they really would have to discuss interview technique.

  Laila look
ed up at him. Her eyes were dull, like she was struggling to focus.

  “I realised there was nothing I could do. I ran out of the tent. I must have called out, or screamed.” She looked at Lesley. “And that’s when you came.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  Susan hung up from her second phone call of the morning, trying not to think about the first one.

  Mrs Hancock, the administrator at Millie’s school, had been kind but intrusive. Nobody at the school had ever met Archie. His work took him all over the country and sometimes the world. They’d chosen a house near his university base, but Susan often wondered why they’d bothered. In fact, she often wondered if the staff at the school assumed that Archie was just a figment of her and Millie’s imaginations.

  Not any more.

  She hauled herself upstairs, her limbs heavy. The two police constables had been kind, too. They’d broken the news as gently as possible in the circumstances: lowered voices, respectful tones. Hats on their laps. A Family Liaison Officer would be around later on. Possibly members of the Dorset Major Crimes Team, too.

  Major Crimes Team.

  Susan lowered herself to the top step and plunged her fist into her mouth. She wanted to slide into bed, to bury herself under the duvet and pretend today had never happened.

  “Mummy? What did the policemen want?” Millie stood over her, her face full of worry. Two police officers turning up when you were on your way to school, that was a scary experience for a child.

  “Are we going to school now?”

  “You’ve got a day off.” Susan couldn’t look her daughter in the eye.

  “Really? Brilliant!”

  Mille ran into her room, all thoughts of the policemen gone. She threw herself onto her bed and grabbed her phone.

  Susan wanted to protect her. To give her the joy of a day off school without the heartache of knowing why. She could take her into town, buy ice cream at Oliver’s. Maybe even head out to Weston, go on the rides. One final day together before she brought Millie’s world crashing down.

  Millie stood in the doorway. “I WhatsApped Hayley. She’s not picking up. You sure it’s a day off, Mum?”

  Susan pulled herself upright. Be strong. She gave her daughter a weak smile and looked past her into the bedroom.

  Where to do this? This would be one of those moments Millie would always remember. The room where it happened would forever be associated with it.

  She reached for the girl’s hand. “Come downstairs, sweetie. I’ve got something I need to tell you.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  “What was all that about?” Lesley asked DS Frampton as he closed the front door of the cottage behind them.

  He gave her a pointed look and started walking back towards the car park. She kept pace with him.

  “You treated that woman harshly,” Lesley said. “She’s a witness, not a suspect.”

  He stopped and turned to her. “I do know that.”

  “Then why the tone? We needed to gain her trust. To get her to open up.”

  “She’s a liar, Ma’am.” He resumed walking.

  “I’ve already told you not to ma’am me. You don’t believe her evidence?”

  “It’s not that. She isn’t much more than a child, and she’s pretending to be in her mid-twenties. Carrying on with a man old enough to be her father.”

  “Archie was thirty-seven.”

  “His daughter is only eight years younger than her.”

  “That’s hardly relevant. And I think you’ll agree that it was Archie doing the lying.”

  They arrived at the car park. Mike Legg was sitting in the squad car along with PC Abbott.

  Dennis put a hand on Lesley’s arm. She flinched. “Boss. She was sleeping with a married man. Lying about her age. And probably giving some wild story about herself to the rest of her colleagues. Laila Ford has questionable morals.”

  Lesley spluttered out a laugh. “Christ on a bike, Dennis! If you suspect everyone who shags someone they shouldn’t of killing them, we’ll have more people in jail than we have walking around on the outside.”

  “Please don’t use that kind of language.”

  She suppressed another laugh. “What? Shagging?”

  He frowned and reached into his jacket pocket, pulling out a notepad. Not the black police-issue one but a pale blue one. He wrote in it.

  “What’s that? What are you writing?”

  He turned it to her. She read: Swearing +2. Blasphemy.

  “Oh my God, Dennis. You’ve not only got a swear jar, but you’ve got a fucking swear notepad, too?”

  His eyes widened. He licked his lips and wrote again. Lesley resisted the urge to snatch the pad off him.

  “I regret the fact that you don’t share my – our – moral values, Inspector. I know that where you come from—”

  “No you don’t, Dennis. I come from Birmingham, not from bloody Baltimore.”

  His nostrils flared.

  “I’m not going to change the way I talk, Sergeant, and we need to get that straight if we’re going to work together. Now I know you operate at a different pace down here, and you have a… how shall I say it? A different worldview. I know I’ll have to get used to that. I’ve already learned to say CSI instead of FSI, haven’t I?”

  “Boss, that isn’t—”

  Lesley raised a hand. Over Dennis’s shoulder, she could see Mike getting out of the car. He and PC Abbott would be wondering what the hell was going on.

  “Now,” she said. “You’re going to pop that notepad back in your pocket for me. You’ll notice that I refrained from swearing in that last sentence, which believe me I was sorely tempted to do. We’re going to forget this conversation ever happened. I’m going to pretend that jar of yours doesn’t exist.”

  “It’s for a good cause, boss. The money goes to my chur—”

  “Are you listening, or not? Because I’m about to make a far more important point than any petty nonsense about my use of Anglo-Saxon.”

  Mike was a few paces away. He looked between Lesley and Dennis, shifting on his heels.

  “Yes, Mike?” Lesley snapped. “What is it, that it can’t wait?”

  “I wanted to give you an update, boss.” Mike looked like he wished he’d never got out of the car. “PC Abbott and I went to the dig site. We spoke to Crystal Spiers. And she told us where Patrick Donnelly is.”

  “Which is?”

  “The Greyhound. They open early for breakfast.”

  “I know it.” The Greyhound pub was close to the tea room from where she’d heard Laila yesterday. “Come closer. I want you to hear this too.”

  Mike glanced back at PC Abbott in the car. “Er… OK.” He stepped forward.

  “Good,” said Lesley. “Some information has come to light about Laila Ford that DS Frampton here believes casts a shadow on her morals. If you ask me, it tells us more about the kind of man the victim was, but he’s not here to defend himself.”

  Mike looked at Dennis, whose gaze went just over Lesley’s shoulder, towards the castle.

  “I want to make something very clear to you gents,” said Lesley, “and that is that we don’t make assumptions about witnesses, or about suspects. If we draw conclusions about the motives, behaviour, or mental state of the people we have cause to question, we do so on the basis of evidence.” She eyed Dennis. “Not on our view of what kind of person they might be.”

  “Of course, boss,” said Mike. “We build a case.”

  Lesley smiled. At last, one of these bumpkins spoke her language.

  “Glad you understand, DC Legg. Dennis?”

  DS Frampton cleared his throat. “Yes, boss. Loud and clear.”

  Lesley squinted at him. Had that loud and clear been laced with sarcasm? Was Dennis even capable of sarcasm?

  She would give him the benefit of the doubt.

  “Good,” she said. “Now let’s get on with finding a killer.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  “OK,” said Lesley. “Did y
ou question Ms Spiers?”

  “Question?” asked Mike.

  “Did you ask her where she was yesterday? Establish an alibi?”

  “She was having an argy with the crime scene investigators. It wasn’t…”

  Lesley looked away from Mike, towards the castle. Don’t lose your rag with him. It was her first day, she needed to make some friends.

  “OK, DC Legg. where is Crystal now?”

  “Still at the crime scene. Observing.”

  “In that case, you and I are going down there to talk to her.”

  “Boss.” He looked like he was about to salute her. Lesley turned to Dennis.

  “You and PC Abbott can go and interview Patrick Donnelly. I want to know if he had a motive to kill Archie, what he was doing in the man’s room. Whether he had an alibi.”

  “We don’t have a time of death yet,” replied Dennis.

  “True. Where are we with the post-mortem?”

  Dennis and Mike exchanged glances.

  “What?” asked Lesley.

  “Doctor Whittaker. He was called out yesterday. He’ll probably start late today, make up for it.” Dennis looked sheepish.

  “He’s got a murder victim on his hands and he... never mind. Tell me when you know his plans. I want to sit in.”

  “Boss.”

  “Good. Come on then, Mike. I’ll see you and PC Abbott back here shortly, Dennis.”

  “About that…”

  Lesley raised a finger. “PC Abbott was here yesterday. She’s bright, and she’s good with the public. I’m not having her sit idle in the car because you don’t like involving Uniform in investigations.”

  He eyed her. “Ma’am.” Lesley gestured for PC Abbott to leave the car.

  The constable hurried towards them, then walked towards the village with Dennis, neither of them looking comfortable. Passers-by turned to look at her uniform, intrigued.

  “Most excitement this village has had in years,” Lesley said.

  “Since the Civil War, probably,” Mike added.

  “Huh?”

  “There was a siege. I won’t bore you with it.”