Condemned

by R. C. Bridgestock

  * * *

  The visit to Mr and Mrs Hayfield, who lived on the south coast, in the village of Milford-On-Sea, had proved fruitful, as Mike told the others when he and Ricky-Lee returned later that afternoon. Apparently, George and Dinah Hayfield had lived in their bungalow for forty-five years, and had only recently been able to buy it.

  ‘It was very unexpected, that Di inherited the big house,’ George told them. ‘Di was in hospital, we’d been informed she wouldn’t walk again, and we were wondering how we were going to manage. Then out of the blue, we received this letter from the solicitors, who informed us that her cousin Adam Alderman, had left her his fortune and Crownest in his will.’

  ‘I didn’t know about my mother’s side of the family. Apparently, she never spoke about her past, not even to my father,’ said Dinah, who still appeared unbelieving of the facts. ‘I assumed that mother was an only child, I don’t know why. She died in childbirth, having me.’ Dinah paused to swallow a lump in her throat. There were tears in her eyes. ‘I was told that my father had to work to live, and wasn’t able to look after me, and so I was sent packing to England, to my father’s parents who lived in Portsmouth for them to care for me. My father remarried, and sadly I never saw him again.’

  ‘The solicitor, Mr Knowles, has since died,’ said Mike, ‘but the couple will be for ever in his debt, as they are sure that he persisted in his enquiries to trace Mrs Hayfield, the only known relative of Adam Alderman.’

  ‘Where’s Ricky-Lee?’ asked Charley, looking round.

  ‘I dropped him off to buy cakes for the debrief. He was insistent. He should be here any minute,’ Mike said looking at his watch.

  Charley appeared to be happy with the explanation and Tattie went to put the kettle on. ‘Were they made aware of the history of the house?’ Charley asked.

  Mike nodded. ‘Yes, that’s why they decided to get rid of it as soon as possible. Well, you would, wouldn’t you? Apparently, the money that Adam Alderman left them made them financially secure for life, so they weren’t in any rush. It’s all in the detailed statements we took.’

  Annie looked confused. ‘You mean they weren’t desperate for cash, and that’s why they decided to rent the house out to the Dixons without waiting for references?’ she said.

  Mike shook his head, ‘No.’

  ‘Then Raglan lied to us?’

  ‘It would appear so.’ Mike looked at his watch, then at the door, and he frowned. ‘Where the hell has Ricky-Lee got to?’

  ‘How come they chose Raglan to sell the house for them?’ said Annie, eagerly.

  ‘Mr Knowles, the deceased solicitor, gave them Raglan’s details, and since Raglans were local estate agents of long standing, it seemed like a sensible thing to do, but…’ Mike’s eyes lit up, ‘…there’s more. I was going to wait until Ricky-Lee got back, but would you believe that Raglan has been to see them?’

  ‘You gotta be kidding me. Recently?’

  ‘Yes, he took them pictures of the fire-damaged building from the first fire. He said he wanted to speak to them personally because he had bad news about the house. He told them that he had an acquaintance who had advised him that Crownest was now uninhabitable and their first plan of restoring the property was not an option. The property would have to be demolished, and quickly, as it was deemed unsafe. Should an accident happen prior to its demolition then the owner would be liable. Raglan didn’t hide the fact that he had a friend who knew people who had ready money to buy the land for building purposes and had advised them to accept. Truth known, I think Raglan frightened them; they were really concerned about anyone being injured.’

  Charley looked thoughtful a moment then shrugged. ‘They left it in his capable hands, considering him to be an honourable man. What a complete bastard.’

  ‘Yes, you’re right there, they even offered to pay his travel expenses, but apparently, he declined. They told him as far as they were concerned, the money raised from the house was to be donated to charity, and although they were hopeful that the sale would raise as much as possible, they were realistic as to how much it would achieve.’

  ‘How big of him to decline travel expenses! So, the last contact they had with Mr Raglan was, I presume, that he had managed to secure a sale,’ said Charley.

  Mike nodded. ‘They’re awaiting the transfer of money for the sale. Surprisingly, they’ve received nothing, yet.’

  ‘They’re knocking the house down now, so the sale must have gone through, surely?’ said Annie.

  ‘Exactly,’ said Mike. ‘A fact of which they were unaware of.’

  ‘What did they think about the Dixons renting the property?’

  ‘They had no idea! As far as they had been told by Raglan, like I said before, it was uninhabitable.’

  Wilkie was aghast. ‘Who has got the money then? If James Thomas has paid up? Would we assume it is with Raglan?’

  Charley’s mouth formed a perfect O. ‘I’m so looking forward to the findings of the financial investigation team. That information will be invaluable to us in tracing the movement of money in and out of Raglan and Thomas’s accounts.’

  ‘What’s also interesting was that the Hayfields told us that Mr Knowles had given them a copy of the Alderman family tree. The one he had used to trace Dinah,’ said Mike.

  As he passed the paperwork to Charley, the door flew open and in walked Ricky-Lee. The smell of his aftershave preceded him. His smile was as wide as the Cheshire Cat’s.

  ‘Where the hell have you been till this time?’ called Mike. ‘The tea will be cold.’

  ‘Always complaining,’ he said with a chuckle. ‘I’ve bought you cream cakes, haven’t I?’ The detective walked towards the kitchenette and Annie stood up and followed.

  ‘They’re called buns round ’ere, cream buns,’ she said. Ricky-Lee’s shiny shoes squeaked on the lino floor when he turned suddenly to hand her the carrier bag. ‘Hey, isn’t this the same shop you get the bacon sarnies from, and those sandwiches?’ she said, ripping open the cake boxes. ‘Couldn’t you have got them any nearer?’

  ‘What’s your problem?’ Ricky-Lee said, handing her plates from the cupboard above the sink, ‘and, for your information they’re called bacon butties round ’ere.’

  Annie shook her head, but her expression was questioning. ‘Whatever,’ she said looking up at him, but he was smiling warmly at her.

  ‘What?’ he said, with a glint in his eye. ‘I buy you cream cakes, and you’re moaning about where I’ve got them from?’

  ‘Seems to me like you’re visiting that place a lot lately, that’s all…’

  ‘A right little Ms Christie, aren’t we? How about you shut your cake ’ole, as they say round ’ere, and enjoy?’ Swiftly he carried the plates into the CID office.

  Wilkie’s eyes grew wide when he saw the size of the cream buns, and realised there was one for him. The room fell silent as they ate and considered the new information that Mike had given them.

  Charley licked her cream-covered fingers, ‘It feels good to be making some progress after what feels like such a long, hard, struggle,’ she said.

  She looked around her. The office was a monument to paperwork. Charley sighed in relief. ‘The murder of Faisal is our focus, but I wonder what part, if any, Raglan played in it, or is he just driven by making money?’

  Chapter 30

  ‘Lily Pritchard has got to know more than she’s telling,’ said Annie, through a mouthful of sandwich that Ricky-Lee had insisted on fetching, despite Tattie’s arguments. The morning sandwich run was her escape to the shops on work’s time. ‘Well, they did close the canteens down,’ she said on a regular basis, ‘besides, if everyone took time out to go for their sandwiches, then everyone would be out of the office for an hour, and work would soon grind to a halt.’

  ‘I agree, but how are we going to get her to open up to us?’ said Charley.

  Annie signed deeply. ‘Mmm… That is the question I keep asking myself.’

  By the time
they’d finished lunch they had acknowledged that, for now, the enquiry had raised more questions than they had answers for.

  ‘It’s only a phase, and you and I know that every investigation has its peaks and troughs,’ Charley said, hoping she sounded more positive to her team than she felt. Things were moving forwards now and she was keen to notch them up a gear.

  A call came into the Incident Room, via Crimestoppers. The anonymous male informed them of a sighting of the Dixons at a Primrose Pastures Holiday Park on the East coast, where the couple seemed to be living in a mobile home. Annie was bursting to share the news.

  ‘That’s it?’ said Charley. ‘Just a sighting?’

  ‘Yes.’ Annie’s disappointment at Charley’s reaction was obvious.

  ‘How do we know it isn’t a hoax?’

  The younger detective looked troubled. ‘Well, we don’t.’

  ‘Make some discreet enquires. I want to keep the element of surprise on our side for now. Take Ricky-Lee with you, book a caravan. After all, you’re the most likely looking couple on our team, so you won’t draw attention to yourselves.’

  Annie stared at Charley aghast. ‘You’ve got to be joking? You really want me to sleep alone, in a caravan, with him?’ she said, tossing her head in the direction of the detective who she could see from Charley’s office window, sitting at his desk. She pulled a face.

  Charley shook her head. ‘Unless you’ve someone else in mind?’

  At that Annie laughed out loud, uncertain as to whether Charley was joking or not.

  Charley’s face was deadpan. ‘We need to know if this information is right without revealing our hand, get my drift?’

  ‘Yes, boss.’

  ‘If it’s confirmed that the Dixons are holed up there, I want you to get hold of any signed documentation that the Dixons have completed which may be available at the site. Anything from which we might get DNA, or fingerprints.’ Without waiting for an answer the SIO bowed her head, then with pen to paper she wrote as she spoke. ‘There will be a lot of red tape. We’ll need the North Yorkshire Chief Constable’s authority to use armed officers in the county.’

  ‘Are you going to tell Ricky-Lee, or am I?’ said Annie.

  Charley looked up at her and frowned. ‘For God’s sake, Annie, I’m not asking you to go to bed with him, I just want you to do some discreet enquiries and make observations together.’

  ‘You seem to forget I was brought up by nuns, ma’am.’

  Charley’s lips turned up at both corners. ‘Yes, and you, Milady, appear to use that card when it suits! This information could yet be a hoax, but we can’t leave anything to chance.’

  With just one thing on her mind, Annie walked out of Charley’s office to find Ricky-Lee.

  Charley was speaking to the financial investigations team, when Annie returned to the office later with her suitcase, but there wasn’t anything more of note to tell the pair. With Annie and Ricky setting off to the coast, Charley decided she’d visit St Anne’s Church to get some fresh air and wander around the graveyard alone, in order to think, before debrief.

  The black-and-yellow police tape required by Health and Safety, and which advised caution, was placed around Seth Alderman’s grave. It announced the would-be burial site to Charley from the slatted wooden gate. It was bitterly cold. She paused to catch her breath, and suddenly she felt the faint rays of the winter sun on her face and it brought her a moment of peace.

  Charley stood for a moment or two at the grave, rolling her shoulders to get the blood flowing into her chilled bones. Surrounding her, lining the graveyard, were row upon row of grey-mottled, moss-covered fallen headstones. Some of the graves were so tiny that they could only be the burial site of an infant, some large enough to house a whole family. Others told stories of a life lived, in brief messages, including quotes from religious texts, lines from poems, or verses composed especially for the deceased. Some depicted images of little creatures, such as Brownies, Elves, and Hobgoblins, and this made Charley smile. It reminded her of the Yorkshire folklore that her grandparents had shared with her about the Hob and his companions, it seemed the tales were destined to always be part of her life. Blue Birches, the shapeshifting hobgoblin who played harmless pranks in the home of a shoemaker and his wife, was her childhood favourite, and when she was asked to read A Midsummer Night’s Dream for her English Literature exam, she was eager to meet Puck, one of the fairies who inhabited the forest and servant to the Fairy King, Oberon. Recalling the story now, Charley felt compelled to bend and pluck a wild flower. On lifting her eyes to the horizon, there was nothing as far as the eye could see but barren moorland and she thought that before cemeteries and churchyards existed, grave markers would be nothing more than piles of rock or wood, placed not far from the family home.

  The sound of a rat scurrying across the stone plinth in front of her brought her back from her reverie. Charley dropped the flower in her hand as if she’d been stung. She shivered, and attempted to calm her racing heart. She berated herself. It wasn’t the first rat she’d seen for goodness’ sake! However, rodents had always had the ability to shock and frighten her. Another rat, and another, disappeared down the hole that the CID had made an initial attempt to investigate. It had proved difficult to see what was underneath without removing the stone, which proved to be too heavy to lift without industrial equipment.

  Charley took the torch from her pocket, knelt down and pointed it at the hole that the rats had disappeared down. There was a lot of scratching, scrambling and squeaking, and to her surprise she saw a circle of gleaming red sparks staring up at her. She jumped back and nearly lost her balance. Shocked, and feeling slightly foolish, she spun around to see if anyone had been watching, and as she did so two, tall, marble effigies at the far end of the graveyard, glistening in the sun, caught her eye. Slowly, and carefully, she walked as if transfixed, towards Michael O’Doherty’s grave that was clearly connected to the one next to it, that of his nephew, Connor.

  A flattened grass path led from the graves to the church. Sparkling clean marble, the grass around them was short and neat, a hand-tied posy at their base. Both full of fresh wild flowers, suggesting to the SIO that someone visited and tended the graves regularly.

  These gigantic memorials were indeed a statement of the deceased’s relationship with the established church.

  Charley knelt to examine the flowers. There were no cards, or anything else that would suggest who had left them, yet they could not be more than a few days old.

  An obvious starting point of call was Lily Pritchard, and if it wasn’t her who’d left the gift of flowers, then maybe she’d know of a regular visitor to the graves who might have.

  Having taken pictures of the graves and the flowers on her mobile phone, Charley was just about to leave when a rotund robin made an entrance behind her, singing a bittersweet song. The plump bird with a bright orange-red breast, face, throat and cheeks, walked boldly towards her along the overhanging branch of an overgrown tree. Charley took a step towards the little bird. ‘I wish I knew what you’re telling me,’ she said, sadly.

  * * *

  Back at the Incident Room, Charley contemplated who to bring into the station first: Lily Pritchard or Mr Raglan.

  ‘I’ve been thinking,’ she said to Mike. ‘The indications suggest that Lily Pritchard is tending to the priests’ graves. Instead of inviting her down to the station, perhaps we should make her an unannounced visit to ask her? We may find confirmation in her rooms; maybe she has flowers on display, like the ones on the graves? More importantly, I’d like to check to see whose pictures she has on display.’

  Wilkie raised an eyebrow. ‘Sounds like proper detective work to me, boss. But looking after graves is part of her job, surely?’

  Charley shook her head slowly as though she was unsure about her answer. ‘It is, but she’s singled two out. Why would she do that? The rest of the graveyard is, let’s face it, a wilderness.’

  ‘There is a difference betwe
en devotion and infatuation, isn’t there?’ said Mike. ‘A blindness to infatuation that makes people see what they want to see.’

  ‘Perhaps because of that, they would know they could trust her with anything,’ said Charley. ‘Tell you what, unless we get diverted by information coming in from Annie and Ricky-Lee, we’ll go and see her tomorrow, shall we?’

  Chapter 31

  Unobserved, Annie smoothly parked her old orange Beetle under a large oak tree, less than fifty metres from what would become known as the Dixons’ mobile home, which was perched on the cliff top, away from the static caravans. The detectives heard strange noises coming from beyond the thick privet hedge that separated them from the parked car. There was a sweet smell of pine trees in the air, and the sea could be heard intermittently, crashing against the rocks. As she watched, Ricky-Lee uncurled himself from the worn leather bucket seat, clutching a paper bag with a sandwich inside. Suddenly a flying squirrel appeared from nowhere and ripped it from his clutches and the fright made him throw himself to the ground.

  ‘What the fuck?’ he shouted, seeing both the squirrel and his sandwich shoot up a tree. Annie laughed out loud as Ricky-Lee disappeared from view as he hit the ground. When he got up, his hair was dishevelled, and his expression told her he wasn’t amused.

  ‘Serves you right for not eating it earlier,’ she said. ‘I thought you said you were starving. Was it the argument with the girl at the counter that put you off it?’

  ‘No,’ he said, like a sulky teenager. ‘Mind your own.’

  ‘Probably people feed the squirrels whilst they are staying at their caravans, so they are used to humans.’

  Annie cupped her hand to her ear as she heard another strange noise. ‘I guess we shouldn’t go knocking, whilst the caravan’s rocking,’ she said in a sing-song voice, trying not to laugh as she watched Ricky-Lee compose himself.

  ‘It sounds more like someone’s getting strangled to me,’ he said, brushing the soil from the knees of his jeans. ‘Best close your ears, it’s not our problem. We’re just a courting couple wanting to rent a caravan, remember?’