‘Bob seemed genuinely upset about Sofia,’ says Tony.
‘Yes,’ says Judy. ‘He did. He said “We all loved Sofia.” Maybe he was in love with her.’
‘I thought he was still in love with that Ailsa.’
‘He certainly seemed upset that she married Leonard.’
‘Didn’t the gardener chap – John – say that Leonard was gay? I read it in the notes.’
Judy is pleased that Tony has read the case notes. She wonders whether Tony himself is gay, not that she’d ever ask. She certainly doesn’t want to assume he is just because he knows the right things to say about art. She realises that she doesn’t know much about the new recruit. He’s a graduate, fast-tracked to CID. He lives in Lynn and drives an old VW Beetle that Judy rather admires. Beyond that, he’s a blank.
‘He could be bisexual,’ she says. ‘We can ask him now. If it comes up in conversation.’ She starts the engine. It’s usually the lower-ranking officer who drives but Judy is a terrible passenger.
*
School is over for the day but there are still plenty of students roaming around the modern academy. Judy supposes that they are going to after-school clubs of some kind. It seems a long time since her own schooldays, at a plate-glass comprehensive very like this one. Judy had never wanted to stay behind after school. She couldn’t wait to leave and hadn’t wanted to go to university, although her grades were good enough. ‘Drama club,’ says Tony. ‘They’re probably going to drama club.’
Judy gives him a sidelong glance. ‘Is that what you did at school?’ It can only have been about five years ago that Tony was a pupil. Some of the sixth-formers slouching past look slightly older than him.
‘Yes,’ says Tony. ‘I wanted to be an actor once.’
Judy stores that one up.
Leonard meets them in the art room surrounded by papier-mâché faces, knobbly and grotesque, painted brown, yellow and bright pink. Leonard also looks older than March but he seems tougher-fibred than Bob. He is shortish but is tanned and fit-looking with crew-cut grey hair and black-rimmed glasses, the sort of teacher who has no problem keeping control in class. His voice is rather dry and sarcastic. Judy can imagine him making caustic comments about poor homework, if they even have homework in Art. Presumably Tony, ex-art student and aspiring actor, will know.
Judy asks Leonard about Grey Walls and he tells them much the same story about the Lantern Men saving lost souls. He remembers Sofia and says that her surname was Novak.
‘Did you hear from her after you left Grey Walls?’
‘No,’ says Leonard, ‘but I think Ailsa did.’
‘Ailsa heard from Sofia?’
‘Yes.’ Leonard looks surprised at the urgency in Judy’s voice. ‘I think someone said that she had a postcard or something.’
That is something to ask Ailsa Britain when Judy interviews her tomorrow.
‘I understand that you and Ailsa used to be married,’ she says.
‘Yes,’ says Leonard, raising his eyebrows as if she is a pupil who has just asked him what his first name is. ‘We were married for five years.’
‘Ailsa was Bob Carr’s girlfriend first, wasn’t she?’
‘Relationships were rather fluid in those days,’ says Leonard drily. ‘I gather that you’ve spoken to Bob?’
‘We’ve just come from his studio.’
‘He’s a very talented printmaker.’
His tone implies that there is little else to be said for his former friend.
‘Have you kept in touch with Ailsa?’ asks Judy.
‘Yes,’ says Leonard. ‘It’s all very civilised. We meet occasionally and exchange cards at Christmas.’ He gives her a rather sardonic smile. ‘Ailsa gets on well with my husband, Miles.’
So Leonard is gay, which raises a few more questions about his first marriage. Judy asks if Leonard has been in contact with Ivor March.
‘No,’ he says. ‘I’ve got nothing to say to a man who could do that to a woman.’
‘You think he did kill them then?’
‘Don’t you?’ says Leonard. ‘I thought that you were the detective in charge of the case.’
Judy rather likes this description but thinks it betrays a certain interest in the police investigation.
‘What about Crissy Martin?’ she says.
‘Ah, Crissy is a wonderful woman,’ Leonard says, with sudden warmth. ‘We too exchange cards at Christmas.’
Does anyone even send Christmas cards any more? Most of Judy’s friends post smug Facebook messages saying that they will be giving the money to charity instead. Cathbad bakes gingerbread men.
Leonard stands up and starts putting on his bicycle clips. It’s a clear sign that the interview is at an end.
‘We’ll be in touch,’ says Judy, wanting to end things on her own terms.
‘I don’t doubt it,’ says Leonard.
Chapter 15
Nelson is to the point at the evening briefing.
‘Heidi Lucas texted her boyfriend at seven fifty-five on Thursday night saying that she was going on a bike ride. This was a regular habit for her, and the boyfriend, Josh Evans, has given us a map of her usual route. He says she would have stuck to roads because she was training for events and because her bike, an expensive model, wasn’t suitable for rough terrain. Evans thinks that she would have gone along the Lynn Road towards Torrington St Clement. It’s about eighteen kilometres, there and back. I’ve put a Red Route in place and we’ll go door-to-door at every house along it. Tanya and I have been organising that today. The likelihood is that Heidi was ambushed somewhere along the way, killed and her body taken to the Cley marshes.’
Someone puts up a hand. ‘Is this a copycat killing?’
Nelson sighs. ‘There are superficial similarities to Ivor March’s killings. The location, the mode of killing and the fact that Heidi was tall and blonde, like all of March’s victims. But we mustn’t let ourselves get obsessed with this theory. It’s possible that there was another motive altogether. Josh Evans has an alibi, he was with his parents in London all evening. He has surrendered his phone and the text from Heidi is on there. There are witnesses who saw Heidi on her bike so we know that she was alive after eight p.m. The last sighting was near Marsh Road at about eight twenty. Evans looks to be in the clear but we are also investigating Heidi’s friends and work colleagues. She was a good-looking girl, someone might have had an obsessive crush on her. Strangulation usually implies intimacy. We haven’t got the post-mortem results yet so we don’t know if there was a rape or not.’ He stops, thinking of the young woman, younger than his daughters, going out for a ride on a summer evening. It’s an effort to keep his voice steady so he compensates by being more deadpan than ever.
‘We haven’t found Heidi’s phone either. Young people usually take their phones whenever they leave the house and Evans says that Heidi liked to listen to music when she cycled. It seems likely that the killer took her phone and we’re making every effort to trace it. Tanya, do you want to take us through the door-to-door?’
Tanya is on her feet immediately. It would take more than a brutal murder to damp down her ambition, but ambition’s not a bad thing and she was a real help on the investigation today. She takes the team through the various sightings until the last one, on the corner of Marsh Road, where a woman walking her daughter home from Brownies remembered seeing a pretty girl on a bike. ‘My daughter spotted the pink cycling shorts. She loves anything pink.’
Judy fills them in on the interviews with Bob Carr and Leonard Jenkins. It seems that they have a possible name for the third body buried in the pub garden: Sofia Novak.
‘I’ll talk to March tomorrow,’ says Nelson. ‘In the meantime, Judy, you continue with that investigation. Tanya, you lead on Heidi Lucas. Both of you keep me informed every step of the way. Tony,’ he finds the new recruit in the circle of f
aces, ‘you can choose.’ He is interested to see what the young man will say. It’s at times like this that he misses Cloughie.
‘Can I work with Judy? DI Johnson?’ Tony says immediately.
Interesting that Tony has chosen the cold case over the ongoing investigation, or maybe he just prefers Judy to Tanya. ‘OK,’ says Nelson, ‘you work with Judy. Tanya, you can pick your team. That’s all for tonight. We need to start work bright and early tomorrow.’ He has been on the go since five but he isn’t tired. He won’t rest until they have found Heidi’s killer.
*
It’s nearly nine by the time Nelson gets home and, as he turns into the cul-de-sac, the first thing he sees is a young woman on a bicycle, her hair flying out from beneath her helmet. He slams on the brakes.
‘Hi, Dad.’ Laura comes to a stop.
‘What are you doing?’ asks Nelson.
Laura looks surprised. ‘Visiting Mum and George. You’re late home.’
‘But why are you on a bike?’
‘I’ve joined a cycling club,’ says Laura. ‘Trying to keep fit and all that.’
In Nelson’s view Laura is quite fit enough already and she has a tendency to become obsessive about exercise. And he doesn’t like to see her on a bike. He doesn’t like it at all.
‘Be careful,’ he says. ‘Stick to places where there are people. Put your lights on. It’ll be dark soon.’
‘Stop fussing, Dad,’ says Laura. ‘Cycling’s great. You should try it.’ And, with a wave of her hand, she pedals off into the twilight.
When Nelson gets in, he asks Michelle why Laura has joined a cycling club.
‘I don’t know,’ says Michelle. ‘But I thought it was a good idea. She can meet people.’
Michelle means ‘meet a nice boy’. Laura hasn’t had a boyfriend since she finished with Chad more than two years ago, unless you count a brief liaison with a Norwegian called Lars, which Nelson doesn’t. He knows that Michelle would like to see both girls in steady relationships – she was married at twenty-three – but Nelson thinks he prefers it when they’re single.
‘What’s the club called?’ he asks.
‘Lynn Wheels.’
*
After supper Nelson goes into what was once the den and is now called his study. Before he searches ‘Lynn Wheels’, he clicks on his emails. There’s a new one from Maddie Henderson.
‘Hi Nelson! You said you wanted to read Jenny’s story. Well, here it is. And, if you want to give me an exclusive about the excavation at the Jolly Boatman, you know where I am!’
She signs off with a smiley face.
Nelson clicks on the story and begins to read:
The Lantern Men by Jenny McGuire
The first time she saw the lights she thought that it was a trick of the eye, one of those strange flickers that heralded the start of a migraine or the beginning of a more distressing episode. She had been working late, marking student essays that seemed to believe that Of Mice and Men was really a comedy of manners, and, when she looked out towards the marshes and the sea and saw the flash – on, off, on, off – she thought that it was a sign that she should take a break, watch some undemanding TV and forget about the complexities of her life.
Then, two days later, she saw it again. This time she was cycling home after her creative writing class, full of a slightly muddled belief in the power of words. She was freewheeling along the Rumble Road and saw the light right on the horizon, a flickering orb that moved unsteadily as if was floating, or being carried. She came to a halt. It was a summer’s evening, still half light at ten o’clock, a liminal zone between day and night, a deceitful, untrustworthy time. But, as she sat there, astride her bike, she had the strangest desire to follow the marsh light, to let it lead her over the uncertain ground, neither land nor sea, even though the path might lead to her death.
She met him a week later. He was an author, brought in to speak to her creative writing class. He was mildly famous, a name that frequently occurred in Guardian reviews, though not often on bestseller lists, a tall, angry-looking man in horn-rimmed glasses.
‘The muse catches you working,’ he told them. ‘Don’t wait for inspiration, that might not come until the end. I’m an artist which means that I have to create, whether I want to or not.’
Most of the group had thought him pretentious. ‘I’m an artist,’ mocked Barry in the tea break. ‘His last book is number 25,420 on Amazon.’ But I knew that The Artist was not talking about Amazon rankings but something altogether more profound. And maybe he knew that I knew because, at the end of the evening, he asked for my phone number.
The first time that he came back to the cottage, I told him about the lights. I had seen them several times by then.
‘The lantern men,’ he said. ‘Demonic beings who carry lanterns across the marshes. You never see their faces even though they are carrying a light. But, if you follow them, if you leave the path, they will lead you to your death.’
‘You do know a lot of strange things,’ I said.
‘I know everything,’ he said, looming above me. ‘Which is why you must do exactly as I say.’
And I did . . .
Nelson’s phone vibrates. ‘Cathbad’, says the screen. Trust him to ring just when Nelson is reading about myths, legends and what seems like a very dangerous sexual fantasy.
‘Hallo, Cathbad,’ he says. ‘What is it this time?’
‘Just ringing for a chat.’
‘Pull the other one.’
Cathbad laughs. ‘I was thinking about Ivor March.’
‘Me too.’
‘So you think he might be innocent as well?’
‘What?’ Nelson’s shout is so loud that Michelle appears at the door of the study. He mouths an apology and she points upwards, indicating that she’s going upstairs to bed.
Nelson tries for a more reasonable tone. ‘Two women were found buried in March’s girlfriend’s garden and covered in his DNA. He had just told us where two other victims were buried and we have probably found a third. No, Cathbad, I don’t think he’s innocent.’
Cathbad ignores this. Nelson imagines him sitting in his wizard’s chair, his animal familiar beside him, giving full rein to his inner nutcase. Judy is probably putting the kids to bed.
‘It came to me when I was helping to excavate the bodies,’ he says. ‘I suddenly thought: Ivor March is innocent. I know that he didn’t kill these women. I thought I should tell you.’
‘Thanks a lot. Did you mention it to Judy?’
‘Yes.’ Even Cathbad sounds slightly abashed. ‘She said it was nonsense.’
Good old Judy.
‘It is nonsense,’ says Nelson. ‘But while I’ve got you on the line, you might as well make yourself useful. Have you heard of the lantern men?’
‘The lantern men of the marshes? Of course I have. They lead unwary travellers to their deaths. They’re linked to will-o’-the-wisps, spirits who are shut out of heaven and hell. Some say that the original was a blacksmith called Will who was so evil that he was condemned to walk the earth for ever, never ascending to heaven or descending to hell. The devil gave him a single coal from hell to keep him warm and he carried it in a pumpkin. That’s where jack-o’-lanterns come from. You know, the lighted pumpkins that children make on Halloween.’
Like The Artist in the story, Cathbad does know a lot of strange things. Nelson remembers John, the gardener at Grey Walls, talking about the lantern men. Visitors often like to hear the old stories.
‘In Scandinavia, they are said to be the souls of unbaptised children,’ Cathbad goes on. ‘In South America they are “luz mala”, evil light, or “la candileja”, spirits who carry ghost lights after death.’
Cathbad always overdoes foreign pronunciations. It’s very annoying.
‘They’re also called “ignis fatuus”, that’s Latin
for foolish fire. Then there are the glowing owls too.’
Glowing owls. Jesus wept.
‘Thank you, Cathbad. You should go on Mastermind. Specialist subject: General Weirdness.’
Cathbad laughs, obviously taking this as a compliment.
‘Glad I could help. And you will think about what I said about March, won’t you?’
‘Goodbye, Cathbad.’
Nelson goes back to the story.
And then it seemed that I was part of his story and he was a part of mine. Or I was a picture that he had begun to paint, sketching the outline, flooding it with colour. I was only really alive when I was with him. Strange then that my thoughts began to be about death. When, in bed, he carried me to ecstasy, I began to wish that he would carry me further, to the end of life itself. Who knows what lies beyond, at the place where the marsh meets the sea?
Jesus, thinks Nelson, how much more of this is there? Just a page to go. The woman meets The Artist several more times and has sex with him in which S&M is coyly implied. Then he tells her to follow the lights on the marshes. ‘I thought they would lead me to my death,’ she says. ‘Maybe that is a consummation devoutly to be wished,’ replies The Artist in his insufferable way.
The story ends like this:
So she followed. The lights led her up hill and down dale until she came to the place where He was waiting. He was holding his lantern aloft and it was as if this was the first time that she had seen his face.
‘Are you ready to die?’ said The Artist.
‘I am,’ she replied. And, smiling, he put his hands around her neck.
‘Bollocks,’ says Nelson.
Chapter 16
Nelson makes an appointment to see Ivor March at nine the next morning. On the way he calls Maddie from his hands-free phone.
‘What is it?’ she says. ‘It’s Saturday morning. I was asleep.’
‘I thought journalists never slept,’ says Nelson, though he knows that his daughter Rebecca, who is the same age as Maddie, would sleep all day if she didn’t have some nebulous marketing job to attend.
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