by L M Krier
‘Good afternoon,’ the woman greeted Steve. ‘He won’t touch you, unless I tell him to.’
He hoped she was joking as he returned her greeting. The dog was even larger, close up. Some sort of German Shepherd Dog or some similar breed, he thought.
‘I was looking for the stone circle,’ he added, thinking some explanation of his presence might be in order.
‘You’re going in the right direction then. You’re not ideally dressed for it though,’ she replied, looking him up and down critically. ‘I’ve seen worse, it has to be said. Sometimes people come traipsing up here in summer shoes and sandals and it can get a bit blowy on the top, even on what passes for a summer’s day.’
Steve decided it might be a good point at which to produce his ID.
‘Do you live near here?’
‘The cottage lower down the track.’
‘Do vehicles come up here sometimes? Other than farm traffic, I mean?’
‘From time to time. Some bright sparks try to drive right up to the top of the moor and usually manage to get themselves stuck. We sometimes get the odd ones, hippy types, going up there for the summer solstice. Not so much the winter one.’
‘And do you notice when cars go past? I’m thinking especially after dark. Your cottage is a bit isolated. Does it not worry you?’
She smiled indulgently.
‘Would you like me to release Timber from his stay and show you why it doesn’t?’
No, thank you, I’ll take your word for it. Did you happen to notice anyone at the end of last week? Driving past, I mean?’
Now her expression was shrewd.
‘You’re asking me specifically about the Friday, aren’t you? I saw on the news about that poor young man found wandering not far from here. You think he might have been here at some point?’
‘Did you see or hear anything on the Friday?’
‘As it happens, a car did go past, but I didn’t make the connection. It just went up to the end of the track, past the farm. Timber barked as it was passing. I looked out and saw the rear lights disappearing. Then he barked again and I saw it was the car coming back. Somebody took a wrong turn, I imagine. It happens, with those satellite things. They’re always sending people the wrong way. Absolute menace. Can’t be doing with them.’
‘And did Timber bark again at any time? You didn’t see anyone coming down the track on foot, later on?’
‘So you do think the young man was here? I wish I’d known, I could perhaps have helped him. And yes, Timber did bark again shortly afterwards, but I didn’t see anything. It was very dark by then.’
‘I just need to make a phone call to my boss, then may I come to the cottage to get a statement from you, please, Mrs...?’
‘You may indeed, Constable. It’s Miss, Miss Harrington. I’ll have the kettle on.’
Chapter Eleven
‘Excellent work, Steve. Really well done,’ Ted said after he’d listened to Steve’s detailed report of what he’d found out so far. ‘It’s the first real lead we’ve had. It’s a long shot, after eight days, but I’ll get SOCO out to look at where the car turned round. The weather’s not been too bad, and as long as tractors or other vehicles haven’t driven over the wheelings, there might still be something to show for it. I’ll get someone from Uniform to close off the site until we know if there’s anything to see.
‘I’ll come out myself, too. It’s no reflection on you. You seem to be handling things well, but it’s my case so I ought to put in an appearance, at least. In the meantime, you’re my eyes and ears on the scene so please note everything. You go and talk to your witness, find out everything she can tell you. We’ll need to ask at the farm, too, in case they saw or heard anything. Good job, Steve, I’ll see you soon.’
It was a long shot that they would find anything, Ted knew. But it was something. Finally. He was going to have to present Jim Baker and his own Super with some reason, in their meeting on Monday morning, not to scale the enquiry down. His team had already put in a lot of hours on the case. Up to now, with nothing to show for it. If there was the slightest possibility that Steve had found where Darren had been dumped, they could at least localise the search for any sign of the vehicle which had left him there.
There would be no CCTV out there in the wilds, but there may well be traffic cameras further down, nearer to civilisation. If they could pinpoint an approximate time when Darren had been dumped, they could at least start looking at camera footage to see if they could pick up on anything.
Ted decided to take his official car. He was constantly being reminded that if he didn’t use it, it risked being clawed back. He’d phoned forensics to see if he could get someone to the scene as soon as possible. Doug wasn’t on duty. Ted remembered he’d said he would be at another cat show. At least it saved him being put under pressure about the kitten. He’d also sent an area car on ahead of him. When he arrived, the officers were already on site, taping the lane off from the road end. He’d need to talk to the people at the farm as soon as possible to warn them of the disruption.
He didn’t want to appear to cramp Steve’s style. He was an excellent detective in the making, though with much yet to learn. His weakness was talking to people, so Ted wanted to be there while he was interviewing potential witnesses, just so he didn’t miss anything through lack of experience or being too embarrassed to ask awkward questions.
Ted unlatched the gate to the cottage at the end of the lane, walked up to the front door and tapped with the brass knocker. As soon as he did there was an explosion of frenzied barking and a thud against the door. The top half of it was partly glazed with frosted glass through which Ted could see a looming light-coloured shape which seemed intent on ripping the door off its hinges to get at him. He wasn’t comfortable with dogs, especially large ones. It was with relief that he heard a woman’s voice issue a sharp, stern command and the dog immediately disappeared from view.
The top part of the stable-style door opened and a grey-haired woman looked out at Ted. He had his warrant card ready in his hand and showed it as he introduced himself.
‘Miss Harrington? I’m Detective Chief Inspector Darling, from Stockport. I believe you’ve been talking to my DC?’
‘Yes, indeed, what a very polite young man. Please, come in. I’ve shut Timber in the kitchen so it’s perfectly safe. Your officer explained that you don’t like dogs.’
She opened both parts of the door wide and stood aside to let him enter the narrow hallway.
‘Not dislike so much as fear,’ he told her candidly with a disarming smile. ‘I’m a cat person.’
‘Dreadful creatures,’ she snorted with thinly veiled contempt. ‘Always off slaughtering birds. They should be banned, in my opinion.’
Ted wisely kept his counsel as he followed her into a small living room dominated by a surprisingly large inglenook fireplace. Steve was sitting in an armchair next to it, his phone, for recording, on one arm of it, his notebook on his leg, a mug of tea in the hand which wasn’t holding a pen. He made to rise when his senior officer came in but Ted waved him down. He took his place on the matching two-seater settee Miss Harrington indicated as she went to resume her own chair opposite Steve.
‘Sorry to interrupt you, Steve, and please excuse me, Miss Harrington, if I ask you just to give me a quick recap of what you’ve already told Steve.’
‘Would you like some tea, before we begin? There’s still some in the pot which shouldn’t be too stewed.’
‘That’s very kind but no thank you. If you could just give me the main points again, please?’
‘It was definitely Friday of last week because I’d watched a series I’ve been following on Friday evenings. I let Timber out at the back to spend a penny before News at Ten while I made myself a hot drink. Everything was quiet then or he would have barked. After the news I was looking for something engaging but it was mostly chat shows and utter rubbish so I did a bit of channel hopping and found an old film.
‘I c
an’t have watched more than about half an hour when Timber started barking. I looked out of the window and a car was passing. As I’ve already told the young man, I couldn’t see much detail, just the rear lights as it passed. It was a car though, not a big 4x4 or anything like that because I remembered thinking it was going to get bogged down if it tried to go too far. We’d had rain that day and the track was quite wet higher up.
‘I’d not long sat back down and settled Timber when he started barking again and I heard the car coming back. I looked out of the window to see it going past but again, no detail. Timber had a bit of another woof shortly afterwards so I thought he’d perhaps heard it again turning round somewhere else. It was probably someone completely lost.’
‘Could it have been going to the farm when you first saw it?’
‘I doubt it, at that time of night. They go to bed early. They’re up before dawn for the livestock. I doubt they would have noticed the car.’
‘How much further can you drive, past the farm?’
‘In a car, just a few yards, and you’d have to reverse back to the farm gates to turn round. You can get all the way to the top in something like a Land Rover but it’s still a rough ride.’
‘You’ve been very helpful, Miss Harrington, thank you. One last thing. Could you form any impression of the car? Its colour, perhaps? Anything at all?’
‘Dark, I think. I imagine if it had been light-coloured I would have noticed that.’
‘And the size? Roughly?’
‘Cars really aren’t my thing at all, I’m afraid. They’re just a means to get to the shops. I have a Fiat Panda and it looked bigger than that, if that’s any help?’
Ted could see that more tapes had gone up and SOCO were installed further up the lane, as he and Steve left the cottage.
‘I didn’t want to tread on your toes in there, Steve, I just wanted a summary. Right, let’s go and see what, if anything, SOCO can retrieve for us, and then we need to talk to the people at the farm.’
The forensics officer in charge of the scene was grumbling loud and long when Ted and Steve walked up the lane towards him.
After barely a cursory greeting, he launched into a tirade.
‘We’re not going to get anything of any use here. Eight days on and god knows what’s been over the tyre tracks since then. There are hoof prints, cow pats or something, rabbit droppings. You name it, it’s contaminating the scene.’
‘Even if you can’t get me anything I can use in court, can you at least try to give me something. If there’s any chance of identifying the type of car, from the tracks, that would be a huge help,’ Ted said patiently. ‘I’d even settle for a best guess. I wouldn’t be asking for the impossible if I wasn’t desperate, but I am. And if you think it’s a waste of time, I’d be happy to forward you the report on the injuries this victim sustained, as did the other two before him. So just do your best, please.’
It was as close as Ted came to a public reprimand. He knew he was asking for miracles but they were what they needed right now.
‘Have you walked the distance yet, Steve? From here to where Darren was found?’
‘Not yet, sir, I was just going to do it when I ran into Miss Harrington.’
‘Do it now, please, then come back and find me here. I better go and have a word with the farmer. He doesn’t look too thrilled by our presence.’
A uniformed constable was trying patiently to talk to a man about to get into his tractor. He appeared to be giving her a hard time. Ted went into the yard to see if he could defuse the situation. The PC looked relieved to see a senior officer arriving.
‘Thank you, Constable, I’ll take over here,’ he told her, reaching for his badge to show the man.
‘I’m Detective Chief Inspector Darling, I’m the Senior Investigating Officer on this case, Mr …?’
‘Mellor,’ the man told him, ‘and yes, I’ve heard all the remarks about being named after where I live and so on. Darling, did you say? I expect you know all about cracks about names, then.’
He was tall and thin, his complexion weather-beaten, a tweed cap protecting his head from the elements. He was looking down at Ted, clearly not impressed by his short, slight stature. Ted had turned forty but looked ten years younger. His dirty blonde hair was the sort which didn’t show grey. None of it helped much in giving him any gravitas.
‘You’re in charge?’ He made no attempt to keep the note of incredulity out of his voice.
‘I am, Mr Mellor. I wanted to apologise for any inconvenience we’re causing you, and to assure you that we will be as quick as possible in our investigations.’
‘I’ve got livestock to see to, cattle to bring in. How am I meant to do that with you lot blocking the track? What’s it all about, anyway? What crime?’
‘A serious assault.’
‘And it happened here? Right outside my gate? When was this?’
‘I’m not saying the assault happened here, Mr Mellor. We have reason to believe a vehicle which is of interest to us may have driven up this lane and turned round outside your gate. This was a week ago. On a Friday evening. Did you see or hear anything?’
‘What do you call evening?’
‘Probably somewhere between ten-thirty and eleven.’
Mellor snorted. ‘I can tell you’ve never farmed. I’d call that the middle of the night. I get up before five most days so at that time I’m in my bed asleep. I wouldn’t have heard anything.’
‘Do you live with anyone? Might they have heard?’ Ted’s questions were always carefully gender-neutral.
‘Wife’s as deaf as a post. She wouldn’t hear anything once she’s in bed asleep.’
‘Do you have dogs? Would they bark if someone drove past in the night, or turned round outside?’
‘Working dogs, aye. They sleep in the barn. Even if they kicked off, at that time of night, I could well have slept through it. So what’s this about, again? An assault?’
‘You’ve been very helpful, Mr Mellor, thank you for your time. Once again, my apologies for any disruption and we’ll try to keep it to a minimum.’
Ted brushed smoothly over the man’s questions and went back outside the gate to see how SOCO were getting on. It wasn’t long before Steve came walking back up the lane to find him.
‘No more than fifteen minutes, sir, even walking slowly as I’m sure Darren would have been doing, if he was dumped up here. There’s a track directly opposite the end of this lane which cuts through some fields and comes out right near where Darren was found.’
‘Steve, you’ve played a blinder. You get back to the nick now. It’s well past your knocking off time. I’ll hang on here a bit, just in case anything shows up. But well done.’
‘Now we have a possible idea of where Darren was left, we need to consider whether he was kept near there. There are certainly some remote places up on the moor where no one would hear anything. We’re going to need to use mapping to identify likely places.’
It was Sunday morning. Ted was talking to the team members who were on the rota for the day. By the time he’d got back from Ludworth the evening before, there was not much more to be done constructively and the rest of the team had already called it a day.
Ted was under strict orders from Trev to finish work by early afternoon at the latest to give himself something of a break before his important meeting with his two bosses the following morning, then the start of the big trial on Tuesday. Ted was supposed to have had a date later in the day with Walter. That was the name of the fat, placid cob a friend of friends had been lending to him, with something livelier and more exciting for Trev, to go out for the occasional hack.
No one was more surprised than Ted that, after a lifetime of being afraid of horses, he’d not only managed to learn to ride to a modest standard, but was also enjoying his jaunts with Walter. He’d even survived his first fall, when he ambitiously pointed him at a tree trunk the cob had wisely decided was beyond his capabilities. Ted’s martial arts trainin
g gave him excellent balance and he broke the fall easily, standing up to pat Walter on the neck and concede that the horse had probably been right in his decision.
He’d promised to take the time off but had asked Trev if they could take a rain check on the riding and go walking instead. He hadn’t dared tell him that while they were walking about, seemingly fascinated by Bronze Age remains on Ludworth Moor, Ted was actually going to be on the look-out for possible places The Preacher might have held Darren before releasing him.
‘I need something for tomorrow morning which looks like a solid lead to follow up,’ he told the team. ‘I’m worried I’m going to be asked to scale things down, so what I need from you all today is whatever grind it takes to find something that looks like tangible progress. So that means checking out isolated buildings online then getting someone round to look at them. Liaise with Uniform for extra bodies. It also means looking at any and every camera near the two locations, where Darren was found and where we now think he was dumped, and flagging up any vehicle which may need further investigation.
‘I’m going to go up to Ludworth myself later on, to have a walk round the whole area and see if I can see anything which might be of interest. I’ll keep in contact if I do find anything.
‘Maurice, any update on Darren?’
‘I went to see him yesterday, boss. And don’t worry, I wasn’t on the rota so I’m not claiming for it. He does seem to trust me, though, so I don’t want to lose touch. His mam managed to help him get cleaned up a bit after I left them on Friday. He still keeps repeating ‘dark’. She said once she got him to bed in his old room, as soon as she switched off the light he started screaming and became hysterical so she had to leave it on all night. He wet the bed too, she said.
‘I told her to try to find a radio station with something quiet and soothing, maybe classical music, and leave that playing in the background. That used to work a treat to calm the twins if they were frightened in the night, or had bad dreams.’
