Murderer in Shadow

by Ralph E. Vaughan

  “It was more like rappelling, like the SAS do.”

  “You’re not in the SAS, Leo,” she said.

  “And it wasn’t bottomless,” he said. “Nothing can be.”

  “You could have broke your fool neck.”

  “It was really very safe,” he said. “The rope was secured to a stone that had been there for yonks, played out by Mr Ravyn and a bevy of locals. There was no real chance of falling.”

  “Why you?” she demanded. “Why not Ravyn?”

  “He’s fit, but he’s more than twice my age.”

  “Or any of the local yokels? After all, it was their brat who got himself into a pickle.” Her eyes narrowed. “Or were you showing off for that constable? That picture of her on…”

  “No.” He hoped the finality of his tone would stem a row, but it was, he knew, a remote hope. “It wasn’t like that at all.”

  “She is very pretty.”

  “In a scrawny way, but I’m rather partial to buxom Welsh farm girls.” He gave her a lopsided smile. “You know that, luv.”

  “Overly buxom, now.”

  “You’re beautiful.”

  “I look like one of my father’s prize sows.” She looked down. “I can’t even see my feet anymore, but my ankles feel swollen as lorry tyres and each toe like a zeppelin. I’m ghastly.”

  “As I said, beautiful” He put his arm around her. “It’s a kind of glow you have about you now, Aeronwy.”

  She pulled away from him. “Don’t you go changing the subject, Leo Stark. You might have been killed. Fine thing, getting yourself killed before the baby is even born. And for what? Someone else’s kid. It’s like you don’t even want to…”

  “All very safe, like I said.” He knew a prelude to an argument when he saw one. “Had to be me. Weren’t no one else. Ravyn’s too old and that resident constable is just a slip of a thing.”

  “And the villagers?”

  “Don’t get me started on that worthless lot.”

  “Why? What’s so bad about them?”

  “Superstitious twits, the bunch of them.” Stark knew how close Aeronwy was to hormone-driven tears, that his best bet to avoid them was to divert her attention. “Before we got there, they tried to scarper away from the cursed Stryker Farm.”

  “Cursed?” Her eyes went wide and she allowed him to guide her to an overstuffed chair. “What do you mean, cursed?”

  He smiled inwardly and moved a footstool so she could put her feet up a little. Her ankles were swollen, not quite like the tyres she imagined, but at least twice normal. And he was glad she wore her slippers so he did not have to see those sausage toes.

  “I know there was a murder there, but the news reader said it was a long time ago,” she said. “Or was it because of the bones you found in that… No, that was after they’d been searching. Why were they so afraid?”

  “You know how it is in these one-horse dorps, the past always close at hand,” he said, settling into the opposite chair. “The blood was spilled decades ago, but it might as well have been yesterday to those folk. And it wasn’t just one murder at Stryker Farm, but seven, though they thought six till I found the bones of that poor lad, Dale Stryker, youngest of Clan Stryker, down in that godforsaken pit.” He paused, then added: “Which wasn’t bottomless.”

  A vague memory stirred within Aeronwy. “Yes, he said it was the seventh, but didn’t give the name.”

  “Not released yet.” Stark put a cautionary finger to his lips.

  “Right.” She nodded conspiratorially. As much as she disliked the nature of Leo’s work, she could not resist the natural attraction held by the lurid and sensational. “So, the bones, they belonged to the boy who everyone thought did it?”

  He nodded. “Now we know better.”

  “How sad,” she said. “What happens now?”

  “The old case has been dropped on Ravyn…”

  “And you.”

  “We have to sift through old files,” he said. “Review evidence, maybe run new tests because of forensics advances since then. Look at witness statements. See if we can pull anyone into the frame who was left out back then, not that anyone was really looking.”

  “What are the chances?”

  He shrugged. “I wouldn’t want to be Ravyn.”

  “That little man they interviewed for the telly, he made it seem as if it would be easy-peasy for your Mr Ravyn, but it can’t be, can it? I mean, people forget, die, move on.” She smiled. “I guess they must have a lot of confidence in him, and you too.”

  Stark seethed as he thought of Heln’s segment on the news. He was really setting Ravyn up to take a fall, and no one seemed to see it but him. Or they did not care. Or, he thought, they did not dare contradict a man who probably knew which closets held skeletons and where every buried body was hid.

  “If you and Mr Ravyn solve this case, that could be a big thing, Leo,” she said. “I mean, even if you find out the killer died years ago, it still counts as solved, doesn’t it? Something this high profile, seven people killed, while it’s a terrible thing, solving it will get you noticed. If not a promotion to DI, maybe a transfer to a place where you might have a better chance of promotion? Don’t you think that might happen, Leo?”

  At first, he made no reply.

  “Come on, Leo,” she said. “I know you like working with Mr Ravyn, but you’re not tied to him, are you?”

  “No, of course not,” he said. “I was just thinking.”

  “Of what?”

  “The case, how it won’t be easy, not at all.” He reached across and took her hand. “After what Mr Heln said in that interview, if we don’t run someone to ground for the murders, it won’t go well.”

  “For Mr Ravyn?”

  “For any of us.”

  Aeronwy Stark considered her husband sitting so close to her, holding her hand in a soft icy grip. They were separated by a chasm she could neither understand nor bridge.

  “I love you, Leo. You know that, don’t you?”

  He nodded.

  “No matter what.”

  * * *

  Meadowlands was a Victorian eyesore, refined by art deco linearity in the Edwardian Age, but addled over the years by architectural additions reflecting a romanticised past, mid-century sensibilities or futuristic absurdities. It was no place to spend five minutes, Ravyn decided as he motored up the curving tree-lined drive, much less the remainder of one’s life.

  He well remembered Detective Inspector Morris Highchurch, but saw little of what he recalled in the thin, paper-skinned man who awaited him in the facility’s common room. Highchurch barely recalled him at all. His handshake was almost ethereal.

  “DCI now, eh?” He sat slowly, letting the attendant assist him. “Sergeant back then… No, I don’t suppose… Did we actually know each other before I was…retired?”

  “Not very well, sir. In passing, you might say.”

  Highchurch nodded, unconcerned about memories he could no longer summon. “Would you care for a cuppa?”

  “That would be nice.”

  The attended nodded at Highchurch’s unvoiced request, but did not smile. In a few moments, she returned with a tray bearing two heavy ceramic mugs, the tags of teabags trailing out, and a plate with four small chocolate biscuits.

  “Dreadful woman,” Highchurch said when they were alone, “but the best of them, unfortunately.”

  “Thank you for seeing me, sir.”

  The old man shrugged. “I knew this day would come.”

  “In what way?”

  “He didn’t do it, did he?” Highchurch’s furrowed brow nearly hid his eyes. “Dale Stryker, I mean. Wasn’t him, was it?”

  “It appears not, sir.”

  “I heard it on the telly, and the newspaper account was read to me by one of my fellow inmates.” He gestured vaguely around his eyes. “Don’t see well as I did. Don’t move well anymore. Don’t do anything as well as I did. Two strokes, you know.”

  “Since the cricket vic
tory.”

  “Oh, you read about that, did you?” He forced a weak smile. “Local lads always gave us old boys a hard time. Cricket. Just a pastime, really, something to keep the more active inmates occupied. Boastful yobs at the pub didn’t expect a challenge tossed out to be picked up by a bunch of geezers, but we gave them what for.” He sighed. “Something of a last hurrah, as it turned out. I had my first stroke shortly after, then a few mates popped their clogs. No more cricket, but we had our moment. Like that poem by Tennyson.”

  “One equal temper of heroic hearts, made weak by time and fate, but strong in will, to strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.”

  “Aye, the very one.” He sighed again, shuddering. “Well, good-bye to all that, as the saying goes. How can I help you?”

  “You said you knew this day would come.” Ravyn paused. He did not want to accuse, but it had to be asked. “Did you have reason to think Dale Stryker innocent of the murders?”

  “As much for as against, I’d say, but he scarpered.” He paused. “Seemed to have.” He paused again. “You sure it’s him?”

  “I have no doubts.”

  “Found the bones in a sinkhole?”

  “Yes, at the centre of a ring of standing stones.”

  Highchurch nodded. “Aye. Recall it well. Behind the old house. Taboo to the locals, it was, surrounded by the cursed Stryker realm. Silly fools! Thought demons or boojums or some damned such thing raised by Wizard Ezekiel would grab them and drag them to Hell. Lionel – that is Sergeant Marquest – used a rope to get to a ledge and shined his torch down.” He was silent for a long moment. “No changing what was done, or not done. I thought at the time they were doing me wrong, making me fall on my sword for following orders. Maybe it was deserved, but not for why they said.”

  “Are you bitter about it?”

  “No, not for me, but for Lionel – yes, still, a little, I suppose.”

  “What happened to DS Marquest after he resigned?”

  “He gave up and moved house to Brighton, bought into a shop, got married,” Highchurch said. “Had a son. Or a daughter. He might be dead for all I know.” He shrugged. “Commonalities vanish, you lose track of one another.” He paused. “I should have fought it, not for me, but for Lionel. I was done, I knew that, but being pushed out crushed him. He loved policing. It was his life.”

  “Did you have any idea it would work out the way it did, for you and your sergeant, when you started?” Ravyn asked.

  “I went into it pretty confident, feeling mighty cocky, I have to admit,” Highchurch said. “I thought, a couple days, maybe a week, and we’d have Dale by the heels. Even when the villagers made it abundantly clear they didn’t want him found and weren’t going to help, I still thought we’d succeed – we always had before.”

  Ravyn nodded. He had reviewed both personnel folders. Before the Stryker case, Highchurch had had a clear path to chief inspector. He saw little of that keen mind in the man before him. Despite his protestation, bitterness remained, hence his complete isolation now. Even with the loss of commonality, as Highchurch had termed it, he should have known about Marquest’s death. The bond between an inspector and his assistant is strong, not easily severed by time and circumstance. After nearly four decades, Ravyn had not lost track of anyone with whom he had worked. Such a total disassociation between Highchurch and his former life could have only come to pass because of his own actions.

  “When I got mixed signals from administration, then a clear suggestion that Dale Stryker was wanted more lost than found, I should have concentrated on looking for a safe way to exit, but I bulled on, taking Lionel with me. By the time the handwriting on the wall was writ large enough for even me to read it was too late.”

  Ravyn waited.

  “The endgame, by then, was clear,” Highchurch finally said. “If the murderer of six people is not dragged into the dock or found in a suicide’s noose, there must be consequences, even if no one wanted him found. There had to be a scapegoat, two in this case. I had no killer nicked and no proof other than his flight.”

  “Your only proof was the general consensus.”

  “Not everyone thought Dale done it.”

  “Oh?”

  “Old Albert Dorry, old even then, for one.”

  “Who else?”

  “Woman by the name of Mabel Link.”

  Ravyn mentally sifted through the reports in the box pulled out of the archives. “Friend of Martha Stryker.”

  “Only friend she had,” Highchurch said. “Martha was shunned by the villagers because they feared her family, and didn’t have truck with Mabel because she was friendly with Martha. They knew each other well before Martha got traded to the Strykers.”

  “Traded?”

  “How well do you know Knight’s Crossing?”

  “Better than most outsiders,” Ravyn said. “I’ve read history and folklore books, writings of a local man named Knox, and I’ve talked to many people who live there.”

  “Book knowledge, even talking to the folk there, only gets you so far. They don’t have truck with outsiders, at least not beyond selling curios and lunches to passersby. Maybe it’s changed some in thirty years…”

  Ravyn shook his head. “Been lots of newcomers, moneyed folk from London, same as any other village, but no welcome wagon for them. Still a closed-mouth lot.”

  “Such as it was, such will it ever be.” The retired detective gave a brittle laugh. “Heard that often enough there. Anyway, Knight’s Crossing has its own aristocracy, its own royal families, only it’s not based on wealth or birth or anything of this world.”

  “Magic.”

  “I like the way you say that, Mr Ravyn,” Highchurch said. “No trace of derision or mockery. Doesn’t indicate belief, but you don’t dismiss those who do. I don’t wonder they talk to you.”

  “Any belief can be a source of motivation,” Ravyn said. “God, the lack of a god, ideologies, groundless fears. To understand a man, you must accept at face value what he believes, true or not.”

  “I saw strange things in Knight’s Crossing all them years back, but I never for a minute believed the workings, wardings and curses that shape their lives. Still, no denying the power held by the town’s magic-working families. Stryker, Vogt, Rodgers, Tailor, and…” He paused. “You said something about…was it Knox?”

  “Yes, Franklin Knox, local historian and folklorist,” Ravyn said. “He’s written several books about the area.”

  “Yes, Frank Knox…” He concentrated. “Smart lad, too smart by half. His family hated Stryker, but not Frank. Made a rift.”

  “Between him and his family?”

  “Between him and his father and grandfather,” Highchurch said. “He was a frequent visitor to the farmhouse, so people said. Rumour was, he was sweet on one of the girls, Millie or the younger Heather.” He shrugged. “Maybe both.”

  “Was he in the frame?”

  Highchurch shook his head. “Not that I saw. His father and grandfather styled themselves magicians equal to Wizard Ezekiel, but Frank was just a randy young swain. The rift, maybe because he had truck with the Strykers, maybe because he wasn’t entranced by magic – either way, didn’t stop him from inheriting a shedload of money from them.”

  “He seemed well off. I doubted it was from his books.”

  “Father died a month after the Strykers were killed, grandfather a few days later,” Highchurch said. “Father fell from a hayloft and the old boy was crushed when an engine being repaired fell on him. Both accidents, but you know how people talk. It was the hand of Wizard Ezekiel reaching out from the grave, striking down the foes who antagonized him in life.”

  “What family did Martha come from?”

  “Bishop.”

  “I don’t recall…”

  “A dead line,” Highchurch said. “Josiah Bishop, very minor light in Knight’s Crossing, trying to boost his stock allying his line with the Strykers by marriage. No joy there. Died a week later. Got run over by a t
ractor he thought was in neutral.”

  “Lots of farm accidents in Knight’s Crossing.”

  “Aren’t there, though,” Highchurch said, smiling. “Of course, if you lived there, you’d see the hand of one wizard or another in all the accidents, not to mention sour milk, poor crops and barked shins. Believe in magic, there’s no such thing as an accident.”

  “An invisible war.”

  Highchurch thought a moment, then nodded. “I suppose so. It was why I couldn’t get much out of people, the few who talked. Old Dorry could get them to talk, at least a little. That’s why I had the old boy in on the interviews, him and Lionel. Lionel was more well liked than me, probably because he was more ‘country,’ if you know what I mean. ‘Country folk, country ways,’ so they say, and that’s truer in Knight’s Crossing that anywhere else I know.”

  The witness statements, Ravyn recalled, had been signed by DI Highchurch and DS Marquest, with nary a mention of the resident constable in any of it.

  “If you read the statements…”

  Ravyn nodded.

  “Then you know they were utterly worthless,” Highchurch said, a bitterness soured by age rising in his voice. “Signs and portents, voices on the wind calling Dale’s name. They claimed supernatural beings – called them elementals – did Wizard Ezekiel’s bidding, whipped up windstorms and the like. By them, Dale slaughtered his family so he could absorb their magic.” Highchurch cleared phlegm, and for a moment Ravyn feared the old man would spit his derision onto the faded carpet. “Rubbish!”

  Ravyn said: “I pulled the evidence box from the archives.”

  “So?”

  “It seemed rather…”

  “What?” Highchurch asked.

  “Light.”

  “Light?”

  “Six murders – I would have expected more.”

  “More what?” Highchurch demanded. “Witness statements? I already told you how uncooperative the villagers were.”

  “Physical evidence.”

  “What we had, we put in.” He paused. “Least I think so. Lionel closed it out for me – I was otherwise occupied, committing hari kiri for Queen and Country.”

  “Could Sergeant Marquest have kept anything back?”