Death Walks Behind You

by Scott Hunter

  “Danger?” Terl accepted Moran’s five pound note and rattled the till open. “You’ve been watching too many movies, Brendan. Cernham’s about as dangerous as a Labrador puppy.”

  “You think?” Moran smiled benignly. “In my experience the most innocuous surroundings can sometimes be home to the most unpleasant goings-on.”

  Terl shook his head. “Well, not here they’re not. I wouldn’t worry myself over nothing. Especially as you’re on holiday.” Terl gave him a look which, to Moran, seemed rather more than friendly advice. He watched as Terl went to the other end of the bar to serve another customer. Perhaps it was his imagination, but the landlord’s body language seemed tense, uneasy, giving the lie to his forced bonhomie. Moran sipped his pint. He’d hit a nerve.

  Half an hour later Moran looked at his watch. “What time do they finish music practice, Terl?” Celine had told him half past eight. It was now after nine.

  Terl sauntered over, glanced at the grandfather clock by the entrance and shrugged. “Any time. You know what musicians are like. They’ll be gasping by now.”

  Another five minutes passed and Moran wondered whether he shouldn’t just go ahead and order food for himself. As he reached for the menu the door opened and a group of men came in, clearly in high spirits. The musicians; Moran felt a sudden lightness. He wasn’t going to be stood up after all. But then the door closed and there was no Celine. He waited politely until the band had placed their orders before questioning the fiddle player.

  “Excuse me, but was Celine with you this evening?”

  The man turned in surprise, as though unused to being spoken to by an outsider. “Celine? No. Not tonight. We was expectin’ her, but she never showed.” Information delivered, he turned away to accept a pint and showed Moran his back.

  All thoughts of food abandoned, Moran finished his pint and quickly left the pub. Could be nothing.

  Could be something…

  He paced up and down, wondering what to do. Foolishly he had neglected to ask Celine for her address – or maybe he had thought that asking for it would have been interpreted as being too pushy. He had no idea where to find her. But the band would know her house, surely? He reached for the pub door handle then quickly stepped away, something telling him that it might be unwise to make his intentions too clear. He walked slowly in the direction of his cottage, thinking hard. Matt Harrison would know where Celine lived.

  Or maybe that’s where she is…

  Moran halted and leaned on the churchyard wall, observing the way the sharp curve of the moon silhouetted the church tower against its backdrop of inky-blue sky. He was struck once again by the stillness; there was not a sound from the village nor its environs, not even a chirrup of birdsong.

  Matt Harrison.

  He took a deep breath.

  All right, then. Just a quick look.

  Moran stood in the narrow lane by the crossroads, feeling foolish. The cottage was in darkness. He was about to turn away, go back to his static-fuzzing TV and a glass of malt before bed. Before you make a complete prat of yourself, Brendan. And it wouldn’t be the first time…

  But then the front door opened and a crack of light appeared. Moran retreated into the hedgerow and waited. Low voices, Harrison’s large build blocking out the light. The man stood on the threshold for a few moments, as though satisfying himself that there was no one around. He went inside. A minute later he reappeared, this time bent over as if dragging some heavy object. He backed carefully down the steps and Moran saw that he was being assisted by someone else. A voice was raised in a terse whisper.

  De Courcy.

  The two men carried their burden the short distance to Harrison’s car and dumped it roughly in the driveway while keys were produced and the boot hauled open.

  Moran’s mind raced. What should he do? Challenge them? No, together they would easily overpower him.

  De Courcy got into the car and started the engine. Any second now he would flick the headlights and Moran had nowhere to go. He pressed himself deeper into the hedge, feeling the tight clusters of twigs and branches cut into his neck. De Courcy rolled out of the driveway and turned left, leaving his headlamps off. The car disappeared round the corner. Harrison paused briefly on the doorstep before softly shutting the door, but by then Moran was walking quickly in the opposite direction, back to his cottage and his waiting car.

  He wanted to be there when de Courcy unloaded at the other end, and he had no doubt at all where that was going to be.

  Terl was tidying the last glasses away when he noticed the scrap of paper on the floor by the phone. Gina the barmaid’s writing, soft rounded letters like her large, obtrusive bosom. Terl chuckled to himself. Thick as two short planks, Gina, but worth the occasional fondle in the cellar. He read the note and his face darkened.

  Attn. DCI Moran. Archaeological dig 1974. Cernham. Bog body found, male. Dated at 3–4000BC. Also another, female, initially thought to be contemp., well preserved. Never identified. Body missing. Follow up unknown. Checking misper records. Nothing so far.

  DI Pepper in need of assistance. Incident at residence. In police custody. Please contact DC George McConnell urgently.

  G.M.

  Terl frowned and crumpled the paper in his brawny hand. The dig. That’s when it had almost unravelled. He remembered as if it were yesterday. But he didn’t want to remember. It was in the past, gone. Nothing could change what had happened that day. Everything was all right now. Everything had a balance. Nothing must upset that.

  Especially not DCI Moran.

  Terl picked up the phone, dialled a number and waited. 1974. He could see it all now. Bright sunshine, mid-July, a semi-circle of goggle-eyed onlookers watching the second body’s exhumation from the mire. He remembered her face, serene, skin glistening with water and mud, the swell of her breasts, as yet untainted by decay, preserved for their guilty, curious eyes. And Rufus at a distance, watching, stirred by something primal.

  That had been the start of it. That look, that connection.

  That girl.

  Moran turned the ignition key. Click. And again.

  Whirrrrr.

  He thumped the dashboard. Flat battery? No. He knew the battery was good. So be it. He got out, slammed the door and began walking in the direction of Cernham manor.

  Chapter 17

  “What do you know about the Ranandan case?” Tess asked George McConnell as she threw her bag onto the floor and herself into the chair.

  George McConnell looked up. “You’re back then.” He adjusted his NHS-like non-designer glasses. “Had a bit of a scrappy afternoon, really. First there was–”

  “Save it, George. This is important.”

  “The Ranandan case? I know what everyone knows about it. Unacceptable loss of police life, biggest drug ring in the UK exposed. Media overdrive. Chief Constable bricking it.”

  “She’s the last one, George. Her and the guv.”

  “What?” McConnell fought off irritation. He’d been toying with the idea of a quick pint on the way home. Just a quiet one, to calm his nerves. “The last what?”

  “Charlie. She’s the last officer to work directly on the case who is still on the force. They tried to kill her before, George.”

  McConnell glowered. “So? Where are you going with this?”

  Tess’ fingers flew across her keyboard as she spoke. “I don’t know, but it doesn’t feel right. Banner dead, Charlie implicated. It’s all too neat. Like a total set up.”

  “So you’re saying Banner was targeted by the druggies? And part of the remit was to nail Charlie Pepper at the same time? Stretching it a bit, don’t you think?”

  “No, I don’t think. Charlie was talking to me about this Chinese guy. The big man. He’s been seen in Reading, George. You were at the briefing, too. Charlie was frightened. I know she was. She never said, but–”

  She broke off, bit her nail, grimaced and inspected the damage. “We need some tangible evidence that she couldn’t have had
anything to do with Banner’s murder. And then we need to find out who did.”

  “And how do you propose we do that with forensics crawling all over the property and SOCU in charge? If there’s anything to find, they’ll find it. Wilder’ll work by the book, in triplicate with a gold ribbon tied round it.”

  “Yeah, no stone left unturned.” Tess worried her nail thoughtfully. “But I don’t know, George. I don’t like it. Something’s not right.”

  “Too bloody true something’s not right. Steve Banner was a colleague. OK, I didn’t like him much, but that doesn’t mean I don’t want to nail the bastard who did for him. Whoever it was.”

  “You can’t believe that Charlie had anything to do–”

  “I don’t know yet, Tess. And neither do you. Let Diva deal with it. She’s a safe pair of hands.”

  “And what about the guv?”

  McConnell scratched his chin. “He’ll be back on Friday. Up to him, then. I’m betting he won’t get this one, though. He’s too close to Charlie.”

  Tess considered McConnell’s assertion. “Maybe. But why should the guv be in any safer a position than Banner or Charlie?”

  “Don’t turn this into some kind of Hollywood revenge trip, Tess. It’s probably got nothing to do with the Ranandans, or the Chinese guy. It could just be random. A break-in.”

  “You don’t believe that any more than I do, George.”

  “I don’t know what to believe at the moment, OK?”

  Tess turned back to her keyboard and began typing. A few moments later she tapped the screen. “Got it. Sheldrake. He was the insider. Charlie visited him a couple of days ago. She told me he said something about the Chinese. That he was glad to be inside. He told her he felt safer. That sounds to me as if Sheldrake knew what was going down. Like this Chinese guy takes no prisoners. Moran and Charlie wrecked his operation, so he’s come over here in person to sort them out.”

  “Welcome to CSI, Reading.” McConnell shook his head.

  Tess coloured. “Well, if you’re not going to bloody support me on this I’ll do it myself.”

  “All right, all right. Calm down. Where do you want to start?”

  “The usual place – neighbours, passers-by. Any security cams around the local shops?”

  “Diva will be covering all that.”

  “And we’re going to cover it too. But tactfully.”

  “If Wilder finds out we’re sneaking around behind her back there’ll be hell to pay.”

  Tess sighed. “I have the feeling that there’ll be hell to pay anyway by the time this is over. You’ve always wanted to be on covert ops, George. Now’s your big chance.”

  The numbness and shock was beginning to wear off. From the rear window of the squad car Charlie watched the houses flicker past and wondered when Moran would return. George would surely have made contact by now and she couldn’t see Moran dragging his feet once he found out what had happened. In the meantime she was pinning her hopes on DCS Higginson. He would take her side, wouldn’t he? DCI Wilder had temporarily released Charlie into her sergeant’s care and DS Maggs was at the wheel, driving silently and efficiently. He was an ascetic looking guy in his late thirties who looked like he spent too much time working and too little time relaxing; the bags under his eyes seemed out of place, almost as if Maggs had them on loan from someone a lot older.

  They were en route to the station, where Wilder would no doubt instigate a further debriefing in one of the station’s interview rooms. Charlie wrinkled her nose in dread anticipation. No matter how much aerosol was sprayed, rooms A1, B1 and C1 perennially stank of disinfectant and stale sweat. Debriefing? That’s a laugh, Charlie muttered under her breath. Interrogation, more like. Wilder had it in for her big time. But the evidence was so obviously rigged. Charlie’s mind whirled. The question was, by whom? It had to be this Huang Xian Kuai bastard. Revenge, pure and simple. But how? And who else was involved? How did they find Banner? Had he known his killer? She bit her lip hard as a more frightening thought occurred to her…

  Did she know Banner’s murderer?

  I remember it. That long, endless summer. But when you’re young summers are always endless, aren’t they? Ha! One of Mother’s favourite expressions. “You only remember the good days, Rufus – the blazing sun, the woods vibrant with greenery and the buzz of insect life, the bog dry and cracked in the dog day heat.”

  She always spoke like a poet. But not any more, not these days. And now the green months are full of damp, and drizzle, and greyness. But still I remember those long, hot bygone days. I remember the music, the pop songs blasting out of old Mackenzie’s transistor radio as he tended the gardens. ‘All you need is love’ and one song I used to hum all the time, ‘See Emily play’.

  When the bog was dry and cracked.

  When it gave up its secrets…

  But that didn’t matter, because Mother was in control. She always knew what to do.

  I hurt. If I hold my head just so, it will be better. I know what to do. Mother told me how to reduce the hurting. The headaches are the worst of it. Sometimes I feel I can’t endure them any longer and I walk to the edge of the bog, and stand there, and wonder.

  I remember the fat man, the bearded digger, and his skinny wife. I forget their names but I recall their matching gold teeth – an odd substitute for an exchange of rings, I thought, but perhaps that’s just what archaeologists are like. Maybe it was their way of remembering to smile at one another, I can’t be sure. Anyway, they slipped through Mother’s net, unusually, perhaps because she was still preoccupied at the time with what had happened. I only wanted to make things right for her. It was only fair. He never wanted that. How could he have, the way he treated her?

  The girl. The hippy. The child of the earth. She wasn’t the first one. But she was the last. I saw to that. I never expected to see her again but the fat man found her. It was meant to be. She came up out of the soil, out of the wetness and she was beautiful. Terl was there. I saw the fear in his eyes, but I knew it would be all right. There was nothing to fear. And, as the fat man and his skinny wife fussed around the body, it was as if I heard the girl speak.

  Now I am of the earth and water, Rufus. I am one with it all… thank you…

  I remember the way they stepped back when they found the watch on her wrist, the sweat running down the fat man’s forehead, gathering in a band of moisture above his bushy eyebrows. It’s recent, he told his skinny wife. And she put her hand over her mouth, turned away. I heard her retching into her handkerchief. A dainty cotton handkerchief, not the sort of thing you would expect an archaeologist’s wife to own. I had imagined archaeologists to be tough and sturdy, careless of their own comforts and eschewing material possessions. But the skinny wife had a little lacy handkerchief! Odd how I still remember, how it sticks in my head like…

  Like an arrow.

  She arrived in the village like a waif from another world, carried in on the breath of Scott Mackenzie’s lyrics – “If you’re going to San Fran Cisco…” – like a creature from some exotic city, a city basking in the haze of marijuana and sunshine. The summer of love. Not that, as a couple of fourteen-year-olds, we knew much about love. But we were old enough to recognise beauty, sensuality, sex appeal. When we saw her in the woods that first time she told us she was going to Glastonbury. Me and Terl had never heard of it, but she said it was a magical place. We imagined it must be something like San Fran Cisco, the way she spoke of it. There was a hill, a tor, King Arthur, and so much else, she said. But she liked Cernham, she told us. She had met some interesting folk and was going to stay awhile. I knew who she’d met. She’d met him. And she had already fallen under his spell. I was old enough to get that. I never told her he was my father. I suppose she just thought we were a couple of local kids. Which of course we were, but she seemed – I don’t know, interested in us. Adults usually ignored us, but she, this girl-woman, sat cross-legged under the oaks by the cemetery and spoke about life, and peace, and love, and the ch
ange that was coming upon the world.

  It’s all going to be different, she told us, and our hearts fluttered. The times, they sure are a-changin’. If she’d had a guitar I expect she would have played it, but she just sang unaccompanied, and the sweetness of her voice held us in thrall.

  I suppose we both had a crush on her. I know I did. Well, what else would you expect from a fourteen-year-old boy? She was pretty, and I was besotted. I knew I was too young for her, but to me it didn’t matter.

  One day, when I found her alone in her usual spot by the cemetery, I told her how I felt. I didn’t do it very well. I was embarrassed, awkward. But I got it out anyway. I knew I had to grab the opportunity while Terl was busy with his chores at the pub. I told her everything I felt. And then I just looked down at my jeans, picked at a loose thread, waiting for her words to lift me up, to tell me she felt the same. But when I did look up, when the words I so wanted to hear never came, she was smiling – no, grinning. Trying not to laugh. “Silly boy,” she said, giving my shoulder a push. “I’m a grown woman. I need a man, not a boy.”

  And I fled from her, with her laughter chasing me as I pelted through the green tunnels. Silly boy… what a silly, silly boy…

  I never told Terl what had happened. But he could see I had changed, that I felt differently about her. I think he was pleased. He mistook my indifference for a sign that he could pursue her himself without compromising our friendship. Terl was a few months older, a bit taller, and he had started shaving. I didn’t care if he pursued her or not. I didn’t care about her at all any more. Until the day I found her with my father in the study.

  “Oh,” she said, “so you live here too?” That was all. And he had his arm around her shoulder, a look in his eye I knew well. It didn’t seem possible that they were here, in the house. Together.