Missing on Dartmoor

by Julian Mitchell

  She could see it travelling quite fast along one of the many well-trodden tracks. As it approached the steepest face the inevitable increase in the gradient slowed it to walking pace. The UTV eventually stopped and as the engine died, she correctly assumed that the driver was now on foot and heading in her direction. She stood and watched and waited.

  Sure enough, he was heading towards her and although she couldn’t make out who it was from that distance and in the gloom, she convinced herself that it was the older Sutton brother. Alice remembered that he had indeed listened intently to what she had to say after the funeral the day before – probably just as he had listened in the rugby club to Mary’s planned walk on that fateful afternoon.

  She looked in the opposite direction towards the fast approaching squall, with the thunder rumbling soon after the lightning flashes announcing the eye of the storm’s imminent arrival. The rain carried by it had not yet started falling, but there was no doubt that when it did, it would be torrential. Glancing again at the man, she could clearly see it would be only a matter of minutes before he arrived at the sheer face of the giant rock formation. Indeed, he had already started to alter his path of approach as he began to veer to the left to what he knew was the more accessible route to the summit.

  There was no doubt that he could see her as her fisherman’s coat made her look like a yellow spike on top of a dome. Through the gathering gloom he was treading carefully to avoid half-submerged rocks, gorse bushes and potentially ankle-turning hollows.

  Alice knew that for her it wasn’t long before all this would be over. As he negotiated a particularly difficult gulley caused by the rain and slippery animal droppings, he had to watch where he was treading for a few tentative steps: when he again looked up, the figure on top of the rock had gone.

  “The stupid bitch has jumped!” he exclaimed and then slipped, his boot catching a jagged rock. He regained his footing and increased his pace, changing direction back to the sheer face. He wasn’t unduly perturbed by the deteriorating weather: his mind was set on one course and one course only. He picked his way towards the spot where he thought she must have plummeted. He stumbled on until he eventually saw the crumpled yellow coat strewn across the grass at the foot of the rock face. As he approached the mangled body, he jumped back as a clap of thunder and a flash of lightning happened simultaneously: the storm was directly overhead.

  Rain began sheeting down across the scene where Alice had apparently leapt to her death. The rain flattened his hair to his head, but he seemed oblivious to the overhead commotion. Undeterred, he moved towards the prostrate figure and he could see Alice’s distorted face with her legs at different angles and her right arm trapped behind her back.

  “Why didn’t you wait, you silly cow? I’ve never shagged twin sisters before!”

  Necrophilia briefly crossed the mind of the despicable man, but his ardour was nearly extinguished by the teeming rain. Nevertheless, he ripped open her coat as his excessive libido could not resist a fondle of her still warm breasts.

  However, his fondling was cut short. Suddenly, without warning, the crumpled corpse came to life. Lightning momentarily illuminated the whole area and he was flabbergasted as Alice’s legs instantaneously straightened from their contorted position and her hitherto trapped and twisted right arm began moving freely and at speed, towards him. As if synchronised, in a lightning flash, he fleetingly saw the glint of a blade as her arm accelerated on its relentless path. She wanted to stab him through his heart, but from her prone position she could only plunge the knife into his thigh. Such was the ferocity of the stab the blade penetrated the fleshy part of his thigh up to its hilt before striking his femur. The Sutton brother fell back clutching his upper leg in shock and excruciating pain.

  She was shocked too by what she had just done, but equally taken aback by the person she had just stabbed: it was Harry Sutton!

  Because of the sloping ground he was now lying with his head below his feet. Alice quickly regained her composure getting to her feet and standing, knife again at the ready, towering over Mary’s killer. The agony Sutton was feeling from his gaping wound, coupled with his prostrate position, made him powerless to defend himself against the demented, vengeful sister. She placed the point of the blade on his neck with enough pressure that a trickle of blood appeared before being washed away by the remorseless rain. She wanted the answer to a question. Although her words were barely audible above the din of the storm, she shrieked:

  “What did you do to Mary, you bastard? Tell me, tell me!” She yelled at him, pleading and threatening in equal measure. Sutton tried to use his superior strength to wrestle the weapon from her, but she simply applied more pressure to the knife and the tip further punctured his throat. This time there was no trickle of blood as it was immediately washed away by the deluge from above.

  Sutton knew if he tried to fight back or if he didn’t answer the question quickly his life would be over: he spoke through gritted teeth; “Burrator.” In his perverted mind he suspected Alice would grudgingly accept his answer and withdraw the blade at which point he would become the aggressor: he would then silence her just as he had her sister.

  He was right in that she did draw back the knife from his throat, but she kept it moving back and up until it was high above and behind her head with her arm fully extended.

  Whether from fright, loss of blood or both, Sutton was transfixed and couldn’t believe he was about to die as she was aiming directly for his heart.

  “Die you bastard!”

  Her arm began its apparently inexorable downward path, but had only travelled a few inches when she felt it being restrained. She swivelled her head to find herself looking up at the resolute face of Richard King.

  “It’s over Alice.”

  “It’s not over until I’ve killed this bloody monster. Why are you trying to save him?”

  “I’m not saving him, Alice, I’m saving you.”

  In this temporary reprieve and stand-off, Sutton made a grab for the knife and wrenched it from her slackened grip. For a moment he was back in control until, that is, Lucy Harris appeared from behind the inspector and unceremoniously handcuffed his wrist with such force that he dropped the blade. She quickly cuffed his other wrist and without pausing, and to the bewilderment of the other two, started to take the belt from her trousers.

  “Tourniquet. I want him to stand trial not bleed to death. Could you call for an ambulance, please, sir?”

  The storm had passed and a shroud of calmness descended over the moor. This hush was only disturbed by several police officers, who had now appeared at the scene, and, eventually, by the distant wail of an ambulance siren.

  *

  Alice sat on a nearby rock with her emotions in turmoil as the medics tended to the still-cuffed Sutton. The tourniquet had done its job and probably saved his life. She never had any intention of taking her own life, but it suited her purpose to get people thinking, including Mary’s abductor, that she would end it as her pain was too great. She wanted to entice, and, ultimately, entrap, the person who was responsible for her sister’s disappearance. She reasoned that if, indeed, one of her sister’s so-called friends was responsible, then this person must be deranged, and would not be able to resist the temptation to replicate his dastardly deed. She had wrongly suspected Dick Sutton of being the abductor: an assumption for which she did not intend to apologise.

  Her plan was a simple one, but was dependent on the weather. She had hoped for bad conditions to keep other people away, for fear of frightening off her quarry. She had armed herself with a six-inch bladed kitchen knife from her parents’ hotel. She did everything Mary had done on that critical day, including using her sister’s Punto. She wanted to be seen on the peak of Haytor and, if the person was to take the bait, she hoped her assailant would approach from the south and have to walk the last part of the steep slope up to the sheer rock face. That was
her plan, but if he approached from another direction she would simply have to improvise: after all, he wouldn’t expect her to be carrying a knife, save for self-harm.

  She took the risk of him rumbling her ruse; there was a chance that he might have seen her duck down out of sight, but he hadn’t, as, fortunately, he had been concentrating on his footing at that precise moment: her plan had worked.

  She had then quickly slithered down the far side of Haytor, run crouched down and adopted a prostrate position, dramatically mimicking the aftermath of a suicidal leap. She knew that the only way to overpower a man, any man, but particularly one as strong as Dick Sutton, was the element of surprise. Even though she had suspected the wrong man, her subterfuge had lured the killer from his duplicitous existence.

  However, there was not a shred of triumphalism as she sat on the rock, gently sobbing. True, the person responsible for Mary’s abduction was now unmasked. How his words would haunt and torment her: “I’ve never shagged twin sisters before.”

  She knew then that her sister was dead.

  *

  If she was at all intrigued – which she wasn’t – she may well have asked herself how the police, and the inspector in particular, had come to be on the scene so quickly. The answer to that question was twofold. Firstly, the inspector had belatedly received the Forensic report that morning and before the inspection he had specifically asked for information on the UTV, which, despite no DNA evidence, in his mind it was always the most likely vehicle to have been used in the abduction. He wanted to know if it had been recently serviced.

  Right at the end of the four page report, almost lost in the other findings was a very important paragraph: ‘We were asked to specifically state if the vehicle had been recently serviced. By the condition of the filter, the blackness of the oil on the dipstick and the amount of oil in the engine block (it was only three quarters full), it is our opinion that the vehicle had not been serviced for some considerable time.’

  King then knew that Harry Sutton had lied about servicing the UTV thus substantially increasing the probability that he was the person who had abducted Mary.

  No doubt Sutton had intended to carry out the service, but knowing that Mary was likely to be alone on the moor was too tempting. Whether he intended to do her harm they would never know unless he decided to confess. Equally, without a confession, not servicing the UTV did not automatically make him guilty of the abduction.

  Secondly, the previous day, Jack Lacey had contacted King and told him what Alice had said to some people at the funeral; Lacey clearly feared she was contemplating suicide.

  After sucking his ubiquitous sherbet lemon, and discussing it with his sergeant, King told her of his suspicion that this was part of Alice’s desperate plan. After much deliberation, he decided not to interfere, but to let it take its natural course, as despite the flaw in the young Sutton’s alibi over the UTV service, it would not be easy to prove he had actually committed the crime. King knew this was a high risk strategy and so he told all his detectives that he wanted it noted that should it go wrong and Alice come to harm, he was taking full responsibility for the decision to adopt the wait-and-see approach.

  In order to mitigate this potentially reckless act, King, his team of detectives and uniformed officers watched in groups from side lanes close to Haytor. His risk had been rewarded: the abductor and killer had been arrested, Alice was unharmed and, equally important, he had saved her from becoming a murderess.

  *

  Harris retrieved her bloodied belt from the paramedics as Sutton was stretchered to the waiting ambulance, handcuffed to a police officer, to be escorted to Derriford by a police car.

  Now wrapped in a blanket, Alice was arrested by Sergeant Harris as stabbing a man, however just the cause, was an offence. She was ushered towards an unmarked police car. Before she ducked her head to get in, she glanced at the departing ambulance. She was at peace with herself. She could do nothing to bring back her beloved sister, but she had done all that she could to avenge her.

  TWENTY TWO

  It was Wednesday, the first day of February, and Harry Sutton knew Mary Cranson would be on the moor that afternoon. She had announced as much in the rugby club the previous evening. When she was asking about the weather for the next day, he pretended he wasn’t listening and carried on a conversation: he had heard every word and was already making plans. He also knew that on that late winter’s day, with the weather forecast as it was, there would be very few, if any, people on, or around, Haytor. In his mind this provided the perfect opportunity to put his plan in to action.

  The younger Sutton brother had an extremely high sex drive: so much so that it was a sickness. If he had viewed it as an illness and seen a specialist, it may have been clinically diagnosed as hypersexuality: he experienced extremely frequent and sudden increases in his libido. But he didn’t seek professional help, rather choosing to regularly take advantage of the sex trade in Plymouth to satisfy his occasional obnoxious and depraved behaviour.

  He envied Tom Bowers, Mary’s boyfriend, as he, like his brother, Dick, had always privately lusted after her. Apart from his inability to effectively manage his sexual urges, he also had the unshakeable belief that all women fancied him: this was not entirely groundless. He was good looking, could be charming and had massive self-confidence, bordering on conceit. It was against that background, with such a self-assured opinion that no woman wanted to or could resist him, he decided to take advantage of the opportunity. His narcissism, linked to his illness, would inevitably lead to his downfall, but that did not in any way excuse his despicable behaviour.

  On that February afternoon, he could not pass up the chance that had been inadvertently presented to him. His brother was out on the moor, and his father was visiting his neighbour, Fred Pearce. He was all alone and had planned to service the Utility Task Vehicle, but he could do that later: he had a better idea. In his perverted, sex-starved mind, he thought that every woman, given the opportunity, wanted to have sex with him: this included Mary Cranson. This delusion was fuelled in part by misguided self-belief and also by his earlier numerous conquests, including the rugby club medic, Sonia Hill. He knew the time and the place Mary would be after her announcement the day before. Although the weather across the whole of Dartmoor was inclement, he didn’t think she would be deterred from taking her walk. He was right.

  She parked and locked her Punto in the lower car park, zipped up the front of her loose-fitting coat, pulled on her yellow bobble hat and carried her mittens as they may only have been needed on the top of Haytor. She was surprised when Paul and Rachel Betteridge drove in to the car park. She had a brief chat with them and when they left she began the last walk of her short life. She crossed the road and had only gone about a hundred yards from the car park when she heard the sound of a vehicle approaching, not from the nearby road, but from across the moor. As he got closer, she recognised it was Harry Sutton and she stopped walking as he pulled alongside.

  “Hi, Mary, fancy meeting you here. I am on my way over to Hound Tor to look at some of our sheep that should have lambed by now. Would you like to join me?” He had been right, the moor was deserted.

  She hesitated as she really just wanted to walk up Haytor and take advantage of the fresh air. However, rationalising the opportunity, she knew she could do that any time and she definitely fancied seeing some new born lambs.

  “Okay, Harry, we won’t be too long will we?”

  “No, not in the UTV. I’ll have you back in no time.”

  She threw her mittens onto the seat and climbed in beside him and he roared off in the direction of Hound Tor.

  Harry Sutton did everything quickly: playing rugby, running, cycling, driving, milking and love-making. At first, Mary found riding in the UTV exhilarating, then just a little scary as the young farmer drove recklessly over the uneven terrain. She thought that he seemed in a rush to get somewh
ere. On their way to the tor, she was holding tightly onto the handles in the vehicle, so much so that she didn’t realise one of her mittens had fallen off the seat and out of the UTV, landing in some bracken at the side of the path.

  They eventually found the ewes that had recently given birth, and their lambs seemed to be enjoying their new world. After a cursory look to check on the sheep, without getting out of the vehicle, the farmer put his hand on Mary’s thigh, which didn’t particularly trouble her as she knew he was very tactile.

  “Well, what do you think of the lambs?”

  “I think they are lovely, so thanks for showing me.” However, she became a little uneasy as his hand moved up her thigh, close to her crotch. She subtly moved her leg away and sought metaphorically and physically to move on.

  “We’d better be heading back Harry, as I’ve arranged to see Tom later in The Rock Inn.”

  “Okay, but I just want to show you one other thing. It won’t take long and it’s on the way back. Some calves were born last week and I need to make a quick check that all is well with them.”

  Without waiting for a reply, he once again hared off. Mary could see Haytor some distance to her left, but wasn’t unduly perturbed as it wasn’t 4 o’clock yet and she had arranged to see her boyfriend at 5.30.

  A few miles further on they entered a wood, still travelling at speed, and eventually arrived at a secluded small barn. Harry was first to alight from the UTV, and beckoned Mary to follow. At the entrance he stepped aside in a gentlemanly manner, and she went through the open doorway and could see from the light cast from it that it was empty, save for some hay, acting as improvised flooring. She looked around the fairly dilapidated building, and was puzzled. She turned to face the farmer.