by Anita Waller
‘Rowe!’
Leon heard the growled name, and moved fast; the dozy old gardener wouldn’t have the speed to catch him, but being spotted by him could only lead to trouble. Police trouble.
The crash of wellingtons hitting various rocks and bushes as Danny slipped and slithered down the difficult terrain told Leon that this particular dozy old gardener was intent on reaching him.
Leon stopped.
He turned, slipped his right hand into his pocket and took out the silenced gun.
Danny gave a huge roar. ‘Oh no you don’t, you evil bastard!’ He threw himself at the black-clad figure of Leon Rowe.
Leon fired twice. The first shot dropped Danny to his knees. The second splattered his brains around the path and in the water.
All was silent again.
Leon ran.
6
Doris settled Henry at her counter with some paper and a pencil, and carried a tray of drinks through to Mouse’s office. Mouse smiled and thanked her, and Doris headed back out to the little boy who seemed much too quiet.
‘I’m sure Mummy won’t be long. What shall we draw?’
‘Ducks.’
‘O… kay. We can draw ducks, I’m sure.’
She picked up a second pencil and bent her head.
‘So, now we’ve got a drink and you’re a little calmer, tell me what happened.’
There was a huge sigh. ‘Henry and I are going on holiday. I’ve been paying for a year for it, paying monthly because we don’t have a lot of money. His father died and so we have no financial help, but finally it’s here. We’re going on Saturday… or we were. I don’t know what’s going to happen now. I’ve paid for a caravan at the coast, nothing special, but he’ll love the beach. I had saved £300 for spending money, and we’d made a big thing about coming down to the cash machine to get it out.’ She paused for a moment, and Mouse remained silent.
‘I put my card in the machine, put in my pin number and pressed for £300, then felt Henry move. He’s quite lively, a bit of a handful, and I turned to grab him but he was heading for the road. I ran after him and he fell off the edge of the pavement and landed face down on the road. I picked him up, sorted him out, and went back to get my money. It had gone.’
‘But the machine would have reclaimed it, wouldn’t it? I’m pretty sure if you don’t get it within a certain amount of time, it whips it back.’
‘I thought that, so I waited a few minutes. I tried again and it said insufficient funds. I suspect somebody went to the supermarket, walked past the machine and helped themselves. I felt overwhelmed with worry, burst out crying and sat on the floor. That’s when you turned up.’
Mouse nodded. ‘Okay, first things first.’ She pushed the telephone across the desk towards Keeley. ‘Ring your bank and ask them if the machine took back the money. It may be something simple like it takes time to re-credit your account.’
‘Erm… I can’t really do this. I have no money to pay you for your time.’
‘Just ring the bank, Keeley.’
‘I will, but I’ll do it on my own phone, the number’s in that.’
‘You always this stubborn?’ Mouse asked.
‘Probably,’ Keeley said. ‘I’ve had to be.’
She pressed the call button, and it took some minutes of other keys being pressed before she reached a person.
The answer was short and sweet, although not to Keeley’s ears. She looked up at Mouse after disconnecting.
‘The money has come out of my account.’
‘Okay. Let’s not panic. There must be CCTV at that cash machine, either a camera installed by the bank over the machine, or one installed by the supermarket. We’ll go over and talk to the manager, see if he can help.’
Mouse pushed her chair back and picked up her bag. ‘Come on, let’s go and see what we can find out.’
Henry was quite happy to be left with Doris for a few minutes, and Mouse and Keeley left the shop, hurrying across the road towards the supermarket.
The manager was unhelpful, stating several times that the cash machine wasn’t their problem, that it was a bank problem.
‘I know that,’ Mouse said. ‘But think on this, Mr Newton. If you won’t help us, we’ll have no option but to call the police. A crime has been committed. The shop will have to close while they investigate and dust for fingerprints, and it won’t be just for an hour. You might as well send your staff home and tell them to come back the day after tomorrow, because I’ll raise so many issues it will stretch out that long. Now, what’s your decision?’
He stared at the pretty girl he’d been seeing for months going in and out of Connection, and knew he’d met his match.
He straightened up, tugged on his suit jacket and said, ‘Follow me.’
He took them through a double swing door made of rubber, and led them to his office.
He sat in his chair, and Mouse pointed to the other chair, indicating that Keeley should sit down. Mouse then perched her bum on the desk, leaned across to the man and said, ‘Anytime you’re ready, Norman. Show us what you have.’
Despite her worries and concerns, Keeley looked as if she was trying desperately hard not to laugh. The poor man looked terrified.
He swung the monitor around so they could see it, and then proceeded to rewind the picture it was showing to an earlier time. He looked up in query, almost afraid to speak.
‘Half an hour should do it,’ Mouse said.
The rewind stopped, and the two women watched the screen.
It eventually showed Keeley and Henry walking up to the cash machine, and Keeley placing Henry in front of her, facing the keypad. She keyed in her pin number and Henry reached up and added an extra digit. The machine clearly said it was an incorrect number because the card was returned. She moved Henry to one side, and reinserted the card. This time her pin number was accepted and she completed the request for £300. The machine ejected her card and she took it at the same time as Henry ran away from her side and towards the road. Clutching the returned card, she ran after him and caught up to him as he fell into the road.
They saw her comfort him, and then saw a figure in light coloured jogging bottoms and a sleeveless running vest with the number nine printed on it, jog into view. He bent and took the money still in the cash machine dispenser, and increased his running speed as he ran off with the money.
‘Do you know him?’ Mouse asked Norman Newton.
He didn’t answer immediately, his eyes were glued to the screen, a look of horror on his face.
‘Mr Newton? Do you know him?’ she repeated.
He turned to face Keeley. ‘How much did you have taken, Mrs…?’
‘Roy, my name is Keeley Roy. And I had withdrawn £300. We’ve already told you this.’
He stood and moved into a smaller office attached to the room they were in. They saw him open the safe, and he returned holding a bundle of money.
‘Please take this,’ he said, and handed over money bound by an elastic band. ‘I do know him, and I’ll deal with him.’
Mouse stood. ‘Whoa. If you know him, then this is definitely a police matter. Who is he?’
Newton sighed. ‘He’s my son. And trust me, he’ll live to regret doing this. The money will be paid back into that safe in full by tonight.’
‘You promise you’ll deal with him?’ Keeley looked up at the man who was clearly distressed.
‘I do, and I also promise he’ll make a full apology to both of you for causing such heartache. Please leave me your address, he will be visiting you, alongside me.’
Keeley hesitated for a moment, then pulled a small scrap of paper towards her. She scribbled down her address and stood. ‘Come on, Beth. Let’s leave Mr Newton to sort this. Thank you for replacing my money,’ she said.
They were back in Connection before Mouse spoke again.
‘You sure about this?’
Keeley nodded. ‘I am. I have a son, and one day somebody may have to forgive something he’s done
. I certainly don’t think Newton’s son is going to get away with anything, do you?’
Mouse laughed. ‘I wouldn’t want to be in his shoes, that’s for sure. Did he give you the full amount?’
Keeley took out the money she had dropped into her bag, and began to count it. She stopped at three hundred, still holding extra in her left hand. She carried on and finally looked up. ‘He’s given me five hundred. Five hundred, Beth! There’ll be no shortage of ice creams on this holiday.’
‘If that’s the case,’ Mouse joked, ‘I almost wish I was coming with you. Can you do me a favour and just fill out one of our contract forms? There’s no charge to you, of course, I haven’t really done anything, but I’m taking a course and we have to talk about a couple of real cases. I think this will be excellent for it. Don’t worry, I won’t use your name, but if I have to provide proof I actually did the work, then I’ll need the contract.’
‘Happy to oblige,’ Keeley said, and took the official-looking form. ‘It’s been an eventful trip out for us and Hoppy.’
‘Hoppy?’
‘He’s a toy rabbit. He belongs to Henry’s class, and they take it in turns to look after him for the week. We have to take him out and photograph him in different places. The idea was to bring him to Eyam, and snap him in the churchyard, by the plague cottages, that sort of thing, and to combine it with the trip to get our money. If I’d stayed local, none of this would have happened.’
She shook her head almost in disbelief, and bent to sign the contract.
‘Thank you so much, Beth,’ Keeley said, as she pushed the contract back across the desk towards Mouse.
Five minutes later, peace was restored, and both Doris and Mouse waved off their unexpected visitors.
‘That was easy to solve,’ Mouse said. ‘Let’s hope finding Pamela Farrar is just as easy. We got any water in the fridge? I’m really thirsty.’
‘There’s a couple of bottles. Help yourself. I’ll file this contract, and then we’ll have a chat about where we go next with the case that actually makes us money,’ Doris said with a laugh.
She picked up the contract, photocopied it, and walked towards the filing cabinet. She took out a folder marked contracts, and inserted it alphabetically. The photocopy was placed into a newly opened file and it was only as she was closing it that she noticed the address.
‘Mouse, did Keeley say where she lived?’
‘No, I know it’s not Eyam, because they came here for a treat, but she didn’t say anything other than if she’d stayed local, none of this would have happened.’
‘Local is Hope. Her address is two, Journey Street, Hope.’
‘How odd that we’ve two cases both from the same village,’ Mouse said, trying desperately to open the sports top of the bottle of water, and not really listening to her nan.
‘Tom and Judy’s address is one, Journey Street.’
Mouse put the bottle on her desk.
‘What?’
‘They live next door to each other. The other side of the road has no houses on it, it’s open land, hence the consecutive house numbers. What did she say about Henry? His daddy was dead?’
‘You don’t think…?’
Doris shrugged. ‘You said Alice Small spoke about the marriage being on the point of collapse when he was diagnosed with cancer. I know it’s a longshot, but if that young man is Tom’s son, it opens up inheritance issues. And I tell you something else, when I saw Henry, it was like seeing someone I already knew. Look at the photograph we have of Tom Carpenter.’
‘We need to tell Kat. She’s our thinker.’
Doris nodded. ‘Let’s go home.’
The dog sniffed at the body lying half on the path and half in the stream. The blood had attracted him, and he walked around the man several times. He nudged him with his nose, but there was still no reaction. In the end the dog gave up and walked away.
The squirrel high up in the tree watched the dog until it was far enough away to prove no threat, and then it scampered down the trunk and sat for a while on a root. He waited patiently.
Mouse and Doris drove home, arriving at the same time as Kat. They helped her in with assorted bags and the baby, then sat for a moment around the kitchen table, watching the sleeping Martha in her car seat.
‘She’s been so good,’ Kat said. ‘I’ve had precious little to do with her; Mum and Dad are besotted.’
‘That’s good,’ Mouse said. ‘It will give you peace of mind when you’re ready for work again. We’ve had a strange afternoon. And when it was all over, it got stranger.’
She laid out the contracts on the table, and Kat scrutinised them. ‘They’re next-door neighbours. Who’s Keeley Roy?’
Mouse and Doris explained the circumstances of the afternoon and the final result, telling Kat they had only noticed the addresses once Keeley and Henry had set off for home.
Kat digested their words. ‘You think this little boy is Tom’s child?’
‘We need to do some careful checking, but it kinda finished off the odd circumstances. I’m not sure how we find out, without asking Keeley, and maybe she won’t want to tell us. Why is the lawnmower in the middle of the lawn?’
‘What?’ Kat spun around and stared out of the kitchen window. She stood and walked to the door, unlocked it and went outside. ‘Mouse!’
‘Nan, watch Martha, will you?’
Mouse followed Kat outside. On the patio table was a small plastic box and a flask – Danny’s refreshments. In the middle of the lawn was the lawnmower, and a garden fork was dumped in the middle of the roses.
‘Something’s wrong,’ Kat said. ‘Danny wouldn’t leave anything like this. You should have heard him tell me off for leaving earth on a trowel last year. I’m worried. I’m going down to the stream. What if he’s fallen and needs help…’ She walked over to the back of the garden, towards the trickling stream.
She climbed down the incline carefully until she was standing on the well-worn path. Mouse followed her.
7
They spotted the body at the same time.
‘No…’ Kat breathed, anguish in the one word.
Mouse grabbed her from behind. ‘Don’t move,’ she whispered. ‘Think this through first. Why would Danny be down here? Why are the tools left out? What made him leave them to clamber down onto this path? Did he spot somebody here who shouldn’t have been? Leon? We can’t tackle this, Kat. I won’t let you go down there. Let’s run back to the house, get that panic button working.’
Kat hesitated, every instinct telling her to go to Danny, but knew, even from that distance, that it was too late for her gentle friend.
Her head slumped and she nodded. ‘Quickly, Mouse. We need someone here quickly, just in case…’
Nan was standing at the kitchen window when she saw her girls hurtling up from the path into the garden, and knew something bad was happening. Their faces told the story, without having to use words.
She opened the door, and watched as Kat hit the panic button.
It was almost exactly a minute later when they heard the first sirens telling them that help was on its way. Mouse was at the front door as the first car pulled onto the drive, and she took the two officers straight through to the kitchen.
She took over the telling of the story when it became obvious that Kat was faltering. The taller of the two officers moved to the back door first.
‘I’ll take a look,’ he said.
‘I’m with you,’ his colleague responded and they headed across the garden, lowering themselves carefully down onto the path.
They reached the man, and Dave Irwin and Ray Charlton looked at each other. Dave bent down and checked for a pulse, knowing he was only doing it because it was regulations. ‘He’s gone,’ Dave confirmed. ‘And it is Danny McLoughlin. I’ve known him years. Play darts with him at times.’
He spoke into his radio, organising an ambulance and CSI unit and requesting a call from DI Marsden.
Within the hour a cordon had
been thrown around Eyam, although privately Tessa Marsden thought it was a waste of time. The second Leon Rowe had shot Danny McLoughlin, he would have already been leaving the area. She had no doubt Rowe was to blame for the murderous act; the bullet would indubitably have come from a gun known to them.
Marsden sat at the table with Kat, Mouse and Doris, and opened her notebook. ‘I’ll need you to make an official statement later, but talk me through this afternoon.’
‘There’s not much to talk through,’ Mouse said. ‘Kat and Martha left a couple of minutes earlier than us, just before twelve I guess.’
‘Kat?’
Kat nodded. ‘That’s right. I knew Danny was coming to mow the lawn, so I took Martha out of the way because of the noise. It’s a fair size lawn and takes a while to cut. The two of us went to Mum and Dad’s place.’ As if in confirmation, Martha snuffled in her sleep, and Marsden smiled.
‘She’s certainly a beautiful baby, Kat. Do you think Leon knew she had been born?’
‘I wouldn’t have thought so. I suspect he came here to check close up that I was still heavily pregnant, and Danny must have seen him. I’ve been thinking about this, and it actually leads me to believe Leon saw Mouse and Nan arrive at the shop. I apologise if I’m teaching you to suck eggs, DI Marsden, but have you checked his closed down pharmacy lately? It’s directly opposite the shop, and if he’s hiding out there, he could have seen them arrive for work, and then come up here to spy on me. He could have been watching us for weeks, months even.’
‘It’s sealed off, has been since we closed him down.’
‘Sealed off with that?’
Tessa felt embarrassed as she answered. ‘A padlock. And boards at the windows.’
‘A padlock?’ Doris stared at the police officer. ‘You’ve put our lives at risk by using a padlock?’