An Unfinished Murder

by An Unfinished Murder (retail) (epub)

  She cut the call. Nick switched off his phone and sat staring at it as if Caroline’s face was staring back at him with a commanding expression. She was right, he supposed. Fair enough, he’d leave it with her. She wouldn’t let the police badger Pete. She certainly wouldn’t put up with any harassment they might try towards her. She wouldn’t involve him.

  He climbed into the driving seat and, as he did so, the crumpled sheet of newspaper in his pocket crackled. It sounded as if Rebecca’s photo was chuckling.

  * * *

  Inspector Trevor Barker stood with Sergeant Emma Johnson in Brocket’s Row and studied the row of houses.

  ‘They’re in a great location,’ said Emma, turning and indicating the view behind them. ‘You’d think some developer would have got hold of the land and put expensive property up here.’

  ‘Land belongs to the Council,’ said Barker. ‘They don’t put money into social housing any more, do they? Besides, this is an odd position. I know it’s got a view, but it’s not on any of the main roads hereabout. You can hear the motorway traffic, but these houses aren’t connected with it in any way. There’s that old warehouse park behind them. No one is going to pay top whack for a luxury house with a load of old storage places behind it.’

  ‘They build anywhere, these days,’ said Emma.

  Barker drew a deep breath. ‘Never mind the state of the housing market. Mrs Pengelly, generally known as Auntie Nina, lives in that one on the left. You take her. I’ll go along and have a chat with the old fellow, Fred Stokes, who lives in the house at the other end of the row.’

  ‘Righty-ho,’ said Emma, and she set off at a brisk pace.

  Barker made his way to the house occupied by Mr Stokes. He stood for a moment, sizing it up. There was a grass patch by way of a front garden and someone had cut the grass. He wondered if Josh had done it. Apart from the sort-of lawn, no one had attempted to create a garden. There were no bushes or flower beds, but no rubbish, either. The house next to it, for example, had an old, rusted Volkswagen standing on piles of bricks instead of wheels. Weeds grew tall around the makeshift blocks. It had been there some time and had the look of permanency about it. At least, thought Barker, with grim humour, no one had towed it down to the spinney and dumped it there with the old cooker and the rest of the stuff.

  He walked up to Stokes’s front door and rang the bell. He knew the occupant was disabled, so he didn’t expect the door to be opened at once. He waited patiently, and eventually his ear caught the sound of minor collisions and squeaks. The old boy was in his wheelchair. How would he reach up and open the latch? wondered Barker.

  ‘Who is it?’ demanded a voice through the door.

  ‘Police… Inspector Barker, sir. We’re investigating the remains found in the spinney. You’ve heard about that?’

  It was true the old man lived very near the spinney; but if he was housebound, there was no telling how much he knew about what went on around him.

  ‘Of course I bloody know about it!’ came back the indignant reply, confounding Barker’s doubts. ‘There’s been no end of noise and comings and goings. You police has no consideration for the elderly. They fixed up some lighting and it was on all night long, and a generator of some sort throbbing away. I couldn’t get no sleep.’

  ‘I’m sorry to hear that, Mr Stokes. Can I come in and have a word with you?’

  ‘You has to show me your identity,’ retorted the voice.

  ‘Oh, well, if I hold it up by your letter box, will you be able to see it?”

  ‘I might,’ conceded the voice grudgingly.

  Barker took out his warrant card, raised the flap of the letter box and pressed the card against it.

  ‘Yus, all right,’ grumbled the voice. ‘I suppose you can come in.’

  ‘Are you able to open the door for me, Mr Stokes?’

  ‘Open it yourself!’ was the spirited reply. ‘Key is on a string.’

  When he’d taken away his warrant card, Barker could see a string hanging vertically from the opening. He put in his fingers, hoping there was no dog, and fished out the string with the key tied to the end of it.

  ‘Go on, then!’ ordered the unseen occupant. ‘Just gimme a minute to get out of the way.’

  Barker duly waited while Mr Stokes bumped and squeaked his way back from the door, and then unlocked it and pushed it open. A waft of stale air, heavily laden with the smell of nicotine, enveloped him. He was tempted to leave the front door open wide. But he closed it and hoped there was enough oxygen for both of them. An old man in a lightweight, canvas-seated wheelchair sat staring balefully at him from the other end of the hall. He looked very small but that, Barker realised, was because he was very thin and huddled into himself.

  ‘You know, Mr Stokes, that isn’t very good security, leaving the key accessible from outside.’ Barker was sincerely concerned.

  ‘If anyone wanted to get in,’ said Stokes, ‘they would, key or no key. But why would they? I’m not going to get burglars, am I? I’m a pensioner. I got nothing. Anyhow, no one comes up here, excepting the people who live here. And none of them comes near me, except for Nina Pengelly. She comes every day and gets me my dinner.’

  ‘No one has suggested you have a carer?’ Barker asked.

  Stokes sniffed. ‘I had one for a few weeks. Much caring she did! Fifteen minutes in the morning and fifteen minutes in the evening, and all the time moaning about my smoking. I told her to clear off and not come back. Nina looks after me all right, enough for what I need. I see no one else. You found your way here, though, didn’t you?’

  Barker was seeking some way to answer this when Stokes moved, manoeuvring the chair with surprising dexterity and leading the way through an opening, where formerly a door had hung, into an open-plan area running the entire length from the front to the back of the house.

  ‘Friend of mine did all that,’ said Stokes, indicating the place where a dividing wall would once have sectioned off the kitchen area, and presumably referring to the building work. ‘So as I could get my chair back and forth. Social Services came along and put in a downstairs toilet. I haven’t been upstairs for years. Woman from the Social talked about having one of them stair lifts installed. But I don’t trust ’em. What would happen if I got stuck halfway up, eh? I’d be left there like a fly on the wall until someone found me.’

  ‘Your friend is a builder?’ Barker wondered whether planning permission had been sought and granted for the conversion; and whether any weight-bearing wall had been removed.

  ‘Turn his hand to anything,’ said Stokes.

  This wasn’t quite an answer to Barker’s question but it was as good as he was going to get. He looked around the extended living area. It was exactly that, a combination of sitting room and bedroom, leading into the kitchen area. Barker had been in many people’s homes and it wasn’t the first room he’d seen like this; but it depressed him, even so. All unnecessary furniture had been removed to allow the wheelchair free movement. There was a single bed placed against one wall, and a chest of drawers that probably held Stokes’s clothes. The obligatory large television set – not new but not that old, either – dominated the area, and directly before it stood a battered armchair. Beside the chair was a little table on which stood a tea-stained mug and an ashtray full of stubs. There was one other chair, presumably for the use of any visitor. It was a practical wooden one, with curved back and arms, in the manner of a traditional Welsh chair, but this one had a home-made look about it. The fireplace held an electric fire; the narrow mantelshelf above it was bare but for what looked like a utility bill propped up for later attention. Nicotine was impregnated into everything. The walls and paintwork were tinged an orangey-brown. The stale tobacco odour wrapped itself around Barker like a cloak. There was another odour, too, that of sickness and age. He wondered how soon he could get out of there.

  Stokes had placed his wheelchair beside the battered armchair and now heaved himself with difficulty from one to the other. Barker had moved
forward to help but was repelled by a growl from Stokes who, once he had collapsed into the depths of the armchair, demanded, ‘What do you want, then?’

  ‘I understand you were living here twenty years ago, Mr Stokes. Is that right?’

  ‘Lived here all my life!’

  A lifetime spent here. It didn’t bear thinking about.

  Unexpectedly, Stokes gave a wheezy chuckle. ‘And I’m a sight older than twenty now! I’m over eighty. I’m the oldest inhabitant, that’s what they call it, right? I’ve been here longer than Nina Pengelly. She’s a spring chicken compared to me!’

  He then began coughing and jerking back and forth in the chair. Barker, who had just seated himself on the wooden chair, leapt up and prepared to render first aid. But Stokes flapped gnarled tobacco-stained fingers at him, indicating he wasn’t in distress. He was, Barker realised, laughing at his own wit.

  ‘I wonder,’ Barker went on, sinking down on to the unwelcoming hard seat of the wooden chair, ‘if I could ask you to take your mind back to the disappearance of a local girl, Rebecca Hellington? It happened twenty years ago. Do you remember it? It was in the local papers.’

  Stokes nodded. ‘I remember that. I didn’t know the family personal, like. But I knew of them, because they had a little business in the town, selling foreign holidays. I used to drive the lorries over to the Continent in those days, so I didn’t need no foreign holiday.’ He began to hunt in his pockets and drew out a small tin and a box of matches. He opened the tin to reveal half a dozen hand-rolled cigarettes. Politely he offered the tin to Barker, who thanked him and refused.

  ‘I’m not supposed to smoke,’ said Stokes, putting one of the roll-ups in his mouth and lighting it. ‘Doctor said so.’

  ‘Well, it doesn’t do anyone any good,’ Barker agreed. ‘It isn’t just the health issues, you know. You could have an accident with a dropped match or lighted cigarette. Looks to me like you’ve already had a few of them!’ He indicated burn marks on the arms of Stokes’s chair. In some spots the cloth was burned right through; dark, shiny hairs poking out indicated the stuffing was horsehair. It must be a pretty old piece of furniture, thought Barker. Perhaps the old boy’s parents owned it?

  ‘Smoking never did me any harm,’ said Stokes obstinately. He was then overtaken by another burst of coughing. ‘Too late, now, anyway,’ he conceded when the paroxysm was over. ‘That girl,’ he jabbed his index and middle finger, with the cigarette held between them, at Barker, ‘she’d gone off to be a student, hadn’t she? Like the young ’uns do. That’s where she was when she disappeared, as I recall. Wherever she was doing her studying.’

  ‘You’re quite right,’ said Barker.

  Stokes nodded, gratified. ‘I got a good memory,’ he said.

  ‘However,’ Barker continued, ‘wherever she died, she was buried in Bamford, in that spinney down the hill from here.’

  The pleased expression was wiped from the old man’s face. ‘I heard they dug her up. That’s what all that business was, with the lights rigged up and the racket and people coming and going.’

  ‘Yes, her remains were found. They might never have been, of course, unless there had been some reason for the spinney to be uprooted and developed. But we were acting on information received.’

  Stokes sniffed. ‘Them kids had something to do with it, didn’t they? I mean, they’re not kids now. Nina Pengelly said Josh put you on to it. He still lives with Nina, but the little girl – big girl now – she went off somewhere.’ Stokes shook his head. ‘She was a real little scrapper, that Dilys. Always in trouble at the school for fighting with the other children. You wouldn’t have thought it, looking at her. Just a little thing, she was. But fierce, oh my! Nina had no end of trouble with her.’

  ‘As Mrs Pengelly may have told you, Mr Stokes,’ Barker pressed on, ‘the two children, as they were twenty years ago, saw Rebecca’s dead body in the spinney but they were scared and ran away. They didn’t tell anyone at the time. So that’s why I’m wondering if you can remember anything odd happening around that time. Any strangers hanging about, for example?’

  Stokes frowned and stared hard at his smouldering cigarette. ‘You gotta remember I was off driving the lorries a lot of the time. I might not have been here.’

  ‘Actually, you were here, Mr Stokes, because Dilys Browning remembers seeing you in the lane here, on the evening of the day she and her brother found the body. She – she was picking wild flowers on a bank just at the bottom of the lane when you came along and spoke to her.’

  ‘And she can remember that?’ Stokes glared. ‘She was only a little kid.’

  Barker waited without replying. A silence of some minutes lasted while Stokes finished his cigarette and stubbed out the remains in the tin. ‘Matter of fact,’ he said at last, ‘twenty years ago would be about the time I gave up driving the lorries. So, I stand corrected, as you might say. I might well have been here.’

  ‘So, Dilys is right when she claims to have seen you?’

  ‘It’s possible,’ Stokes said pedantically. ‘But I don’t recall it. I know I told you I’ve got a good memory, and so I have, for the big things. But a little thing like seeing one of them kids in the lane, well, they were always in the lane. I must have seen them heaps of times. So you can’t expect me, can you, to pick out just the one time? I also saw my other neighbours around the place, on most days, but I don’t recall actually seeing any one of them on a particular day and maybe just exchanging a word or two.’

  This was fair enough. Barker tried another tack. ‘So, you retired twenty years ago?’ It made sense, if Stokes was over eighty now.

  ‘Didn’t want to,’ said Stokes sulkily. ‘But the back trouble had got worse. A couple of years before that, I was in an accident on the motorway – just south of Birmingham, it was. Not my fault, mind! Some stupid kid, who shouldn’t have been behind the wheel of a car, caused it. A real pile up, it was. It made the evening news. Pictures of my lorry stuck across three lanes. The M6 was closed northbound for hours. The driver what caused it, he killed himself, of course, so we had the emergency vehicles – ambulance, police, fire services, motorway maintenance, you name it.’ Stokes fell silent for a moment at the memory. Then he added, briskly, ‘It was after that the back trouble started. So I might have been here, like I said, but I don’t recall anything unusual.’

  ‘Perhaps not in the lane. Perhaps in that field between the lane and the spinney?’ Barker prompted.

  ‘No, not to my mind, like I said.’ Stokes pursed his mouth. ‘There were sometimes travellers camped in that field. They used to turn their ponies out there to graze. They don’t come no more, not since they built them big warehouses on most of the land.’

  Barker had been a policeman long enough to recognise an attempt to muddy the water. His questions had made Stokes uncomfortable. Fair enough, it was a lot to expect the old chap to remember seeing a local child on an unspecified day twenty years before, but Stokes had grown uneasy.

  Before Barker could build on this he heard a rattling at the front door. Someone else was pulling out the string and key. Feet stamped in the hallway and a man’s voice called out, ‘Fred?’

  A look of relief flooded Stokes’s withered features. ‘That’s Mickey, come to see me. He takes me down the pub.’

  A burly shape filled the door opening and a man, middle-aged but younger than Stokes by some years, entered the room. He stood, staring down at Barker and breathing heavily. He had a square face and thick, unkempt hair; his shoulders were broad, his long arms hanging by his sides. He stood with his feet slightly apart and head lowered. In fact, there was something altogether bovine about him with his solid build and impassive features. Barker couldn’t help but think of a bull, snorting over the gate of a field at someone threatening to trespass on his territory.

  ‘He’s a copper,’ said Stokes, waving a hand at Barker by way of introduction. ‘And this is my mate, Mickey Wallace.’

  ‘I know he’s a copper,’ said Wallace.
‘There’s another of them down the road, a girl, been talking to Nina Pengelly.’

  ‘He’s come asking about those bones,’ said Stokes. ‘What they dug up the other day over in the spinney.’

  ‘Oh, has he?’ said Wallace.

  ‘Yes, I have!’ snapped Barker, annoyed. ‘I’m Inspector Barker, and I’m just having a talk with Mr Stokes, so perhaps if you could wait outside, Mr Wallace? We won’t be much longer.’

  ‘We’re done now!’ said Stokes firmly. ‘I got nothing to tell you that’s of any interest to you.’ He looked towards Wallace. ‘That Dilys, young Josh’s sister, she reckons she saw me twenty years ago in the lane. Well, like I was telling the inspector here, I saw them kids in the lane practically every bally day, back then. And they saw me. So, what of it?’

  ‘He’s a sick man,’ said Wallace heavily to Barker. ‘And he’s over eighty. You ought not to come bothering him.’

  Barker gathered his professional dignity around him like a cape and rose to his feet. ‘Perhaps we can talk at some other time, Mr Stokes.’

  The two men watched him leave.

  Barker found Emma standing by the car. ‘How did you get on, sir? I got a cup of tea and had to drink it with a budgie sitting on my head.’

  ‘I got the runaround,’ said Barker bitterly. ‘Bet my pension on it.’ To himself, he thought: no wonder I’m losing my hair.

  Chapter 11

  It was market day in Bamford. Meredith didn’t really need to go to the market every week but she enjoyed it there. She liked the jumble of stalls, the heaps of vegetables and fruit, the racks of clothes, the stalls selling the gleanings of house clearances claiming to be collectibles, and the air of general organised chaos. So, she abandoned the piano tuner to his latest sleuthing and set off, shopping bag in hand.

  Living in a former vicarage meant living next to the churchyard. Neither Meredith nor Alan bothered about this. It was like an extension of their own large garden. There was even a little door in the dividing wall that allowed her to walk straight out from the garden into the churchyard without having to go round by the road. She stepped through it now and on to the damp grass. There were trees dotted about between the graves, and a thriving resident population of grey squirrels. One ran up a tree trunk at her approach and perched on a branch, staring down at her inquisitively, perhaps hoping she’d brought some food. But he was out of luck today. ‘On my way back from the market!’ Meredith called up to him. ‘Not on my way there!’ His bright eyes fixed her for a moment longer and then he scurried away.