Dead on Dartmoor

by Stephanie Austin

A thought occurred to me. ‘Dave, when my van was brought in, the day it caught fire, you don’t remember the name on the break-down truck?’

  ‘Yeh, it was Moss and Pike.’

  ‘Are they a local firm?’

  Dave thought a moment. In the background I could hear the ring of metal beating on metal, a radio playing, someone whistling along to the music as he worked. ‘Well, they’ve got a depot in Moretonhampstead,’ he shouted a little above the noise, ‘but they’ve got depots all over, I think. Anyway, I can’t do your van today,’ he went on, ‘I’ve got a rush job on a beaten-up Harley Davidson.’ He chuckled grimly. ‘Not as beaten up as its rider, though.’

  ‘Really? A friend of mine rides one of those,’ I lied blithely, ‘you can’t tell me the name of the bike’s owner?’

  ‘Westershall.’

  A cold, hollow feeling settled inside my stomach.

  ‘Look, Juno, we’re busy, I gotta go. Bring your van in in a day or two and I’ll see what I can do.’

  ‘Thanks, Dave,’ I said as I disconnected. ‘Cheers.’

  Westershall. My feeble brain was grappling with the horrible idea that Jamie really was the bike rider who’d tried to run me off the road when it received another confusing blow. Standing outside in Shadow Lane, studying the portrait of the bull in the window, was Jamie himself. I tried to gather my scattered wits as he walked into the shop.

  ‘Hi, Juno,’ he began, and stopped, frowning. ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘Er … yes, fine.’

  ‘You look a bit flustered.’

  ‘No, I’m fine, thanks.’ I rummaged for a smile. ‘How are you?’

  ‘I’m good.’ He certainly didn’t look like someone who’d recently been thrown into a hedgerow or had any kind of close encounter with a hard surface. He was staring at my head.

  ‘Do you know you’ve got stuff in your hair?’

  ‘Stuff?’ I hadn’t bothered to check the mirror since I’d come in the shop. I put up a hand to my hair and pulled out a little twig with two leaves attached. Well, I had been dragging an old lady through a hedge backwards. I checked with my fingers for any other detritus. ‘Anyway, what can I do for you?’

  He jerked a thumb in the direction of the window. ‘The portrait is fantastic. Old Sandy is going to be over the moon. As a matter of fact, I was hoping to see Sophie. Is she about?’

  ‘Day off. Can I help?’

  ‘I was hoping she might be able to get it framed for us. Emma was going to arrange it but she’s a bit hors de combat at the moment.’

  ‘Not well?’

  ‘She got a bit smashed up,’ he explained, with a rather fixed smile, ‘got thrown from her steed.’

  Enlightenment dawned. ‘Nothing serious, I hope?’

  ‘Scrapes and bruises mostly. She jarred her neck rather badly, but nothing broken.’

  ‘She’ll be all right for the party, will she?’ I did my best to sound solicitous. I was feeling a whole lot better, myself. That cold, hollow feeling in my stomach had melted away, realising that Jamie had not been the rider of the motorbike, and that the steed that had thrown Emma was not a horse, but a hog.

  ‘Oh, God yes!’ he answered cheerfully. ‘Take more than a fall to make her miss Sandy’s birthday bash. But she can’t drive for a day or two. So I was hoping that Sophie could get the portrait framed. I’m afraid I haven’t got much of an eye for that sort of thing.’

  ‘Of course, she’ll be delighted to do it. I’ll give her a call.’

  ‘Would you mind, Juno? Only, I’ve got to dash.’

  ‘Leave it to me.’

  He thanked me and made to leave, but as he reached the shop door, he suddenly turned as if he’d thought of something. ‘That is your new van parked down the road, isn’t it? The white Peugeot—’

  ‘—with the missing rear light and buckled bumper? That’s mine.’

  He nodded, as if confirming something to himself, his lower lip caught between his white teeth in a strange smile. ‘What happened?’

  That cold feeling settled in my stomach again. There was an intensity in his gaze that told me his question wasn’t a casual one; this was what he’d wanted to know all along. ‘Some fool rear-ended me,’ I said after a moment.

  ‘Did you get his number?’ His blue eyes held mine.

  ‘No,’ I answered steadily. ‘It was parked at the time.’

  He raised his eyebrows. ‘So, no witnesses?’ he asked lightly.

  ‘No,’ I assured him. ‘No witnesses.’

  His smile as he left was enigmatic. I couldn’t read it at all.

  I phoned Sophie as soon as he had gone and gave her the news about the framing. She asked if Jamie had left any money and when I told her he hadn’t, she moaned down the phone. ‘It’s going to be so expensive. Something that size will want double-mounting, and they’ll need a wide moulding on the frame to do it justice, something heavy and gilt.’

  ‘Well, they’ll pay you for it.’

  ‘Eventually, but I’ll have to shell out for it upfront. My usual framing guy is away on holiday and I’ll have to go to Newton Abbot to get the job done.’

  Excellent, I thought, and offered to drive her there. Newton Abbot has as many charity shops as Ashburton has antique shops. Whilst Sophie was taking ages choosing mounting board and mouldings, I could give them all a quick tour. Not only could I hunt for stock for my unit, I might find some jeans. I refuse to pay silly money for denims I’m going to scrub floors and walk dogs in. And needing ones with extra-long legs only adds to the expense, so pre-loved ones are fine. I told her I would take her the following afternoon and resigned myself to rearranging my timetable all over again.

  Three ladies came into the shop then, all together, probably the biggest crowd of customers the shop has ever experienced, and for the next half-hour they happily exclaimed over this and that before they went out with two of Pat’s little witches, a watercolour sketch of Haytor, three of Sophie’s greetings cards and a pair of handmade earrings.

  I must confess to a slight stab of envy as I wrapped the earrings in tissue paper. I had taught Pat how to make them and now she sold quite a lot. I could have done with some small and steady sales myself. I thrust such ignominious feelings aside. Her profits went to the animal sanctuary; she gained nothing from her hard work, except the pleasure of doing it. I told myself off in no uncertain terms.

  Whilst the three ladies had been looking round, I had noticed a fourth person gazing in Pat’s window. It was the mystery lady. This time she didn’t look quite as well groomed as when I’d last seen her. Perhaps she hadn’t been able to make use of a cafe toilet. Her hair was not arranged in a French pleat but hanging down over one shoulder in a plait, wispy ends making it untidy. Perhaps because there was a wind blowing that was the raw side of fresh, she huddled in her padded jacket, her hands thrust into her pockets. She looked a bit more bag lady than mystery lady, to be honest. I really wanted to go out and talk to her, but I was trapped by my chattering customers, and when I glanced at the window a second time, she had gone.

  I realised I was bloody starving, what with no breakfast and lunchtime approaching. Ricky and Morris always brought cake − where were they when I needed them? I popped upstairs to the kitchen, in the hope that there might be some crumbs of comfort somewhere. I found half a packet of Hobnob biscuits in the cupboard and some cheese triangles in the fridge. Perfect. I took the lot downstairs and hid them under the counter so that I could ditch them quickly if a customer came in.

  I tore the fiddly silver paper off the cheese triangle and made myself a Hobnob sandwich.

  The customers had distracted me from thoughts about my conversation with Jamie. I still wasn’t sure what to make of it. Did he know that it was my van that had caused Emma to come off her bike or was he merely suspicious? I wondered what she’d told him about the accident. When he asked about witnesses, was he just trying to protect his sister or was that a warning to me to keep quiet? And whatever she, Moss and the other man had been
doing at Applecote Farm, was Jamie any part of it? I’d prefer to think he wasn’t, but I was far from sure.

  I sat at the counter, munching, gazing distractedly at Gavin’s bookshelves and thinking how empty and dismal they looked. I would have to do something about them.

  I brushed myself off for crumbs, fetched the box of books I’d bought at the boot sale and placed them on an empty shelf. They looked good but only filled about a quarter of it. I would go through Gavin’s boxes of stock, I decided, pick out anything remotely saleable, and fill the shelves up. I picked up the first box, opened it and began taking the books out. There was a newspaper, a copy of the Dartmoor Gazette, folded on the top. Batman Dies − I remembered the headline. Gavin had been reading the article that day when Jamie had invited us all to the fete. I tossed it to one side.

  Then, for some reason, I picked it up again and opened out the folded page. Batman Dies in Bat Cave was the full headline. It turned out to be more sensational than accurate. I read the article twice.

  An open verdict was recorded today at the inquest into the death of Ben Luscombe of Buckfast, whose body was found on the Moorworthy estate last November. Mr Luscombe, who was twenty-one, was found at the foot of rocks near a disused mineshaft known locally as Moorworthy Pit. A keen member of the Devon Bat Society, it is believed that Mr Luscombe entered the estate without permission to monitor a colony of rare greater horseshoe bats in woods nearby. It is believed he lost his way in the darkness and fell to his death. The post-mortem revealed that he had recently taken cocaine.

  Estate owner, James Westershall, made the following statement. ‘The woods are fenced off to protect roosts of rare bats and Mr Luscombe was trespassing on a site of special scientific interest. We are only too happy to assist members of the local bat society with the National Bat Monitoring Programme, but visits are strictly by appointment. The old mine workings are dangerous and, sadly, Mr Luscombe paid the price for entering the woods unaccompanied. We are very sorry for his death and our thoughts are with his family at this time.’

  Mr Alec Pedrick, local secretary of the Devon Bat Society paid tribute to Mr Luscombe. ‘Ben was a passionate conservationist and did important work for the British Bat Survey and National Bat Monitoring Programme. He will be sadly missed.’

  The newspaper was dated the previous June, which meant the inquest referred to an incident that was now almost a year old. As I looked up from the article, I just caught sight of the mystery lady hurrying past the window, carrying a large laundry bag, and I realised she had probably spent the last hour in the launderette two doors down. I had missed my opportunity to speak to her. But that didn’t matter now. There was someone I wanted to speak to more urgently. I grabbed a copy of the local phone book from under the counter and began looking for the number of Mr Alec Pedrick.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Alec Pedrick was a bearded man in his fifties, who welcomed me warmly into his cottage. I’d found his address on the Widecombe road, just up the hill towards Buckland.

  ‘It’s kind of you to see me at such short notice, Mr Pedrick.’ I’d driven straight there as soon as I’d closed up the shop. It was good to get inside, into the warm. It was dark under the trees and growing misty.

  ‘Call me Alec.’ He offered me tea and I followed him into his kitchen, passing two young children sitting on the floor in the living room, engrossed in the television. ‘I’m only looking after the grandkids till their mother picks them up after work,’ he told me, ‘so it’s no trouble, no trouble at all.’ He smiled, waiting for the kettle to boil. ‘So, you were a friend of Gavin’s? Terrible tragedy, that was,’ he added, shaking his head. ‘Terrible.’

  I sat in the chair that he indicated, next to the orange glow of a wood-burning stove. The kitchen was cosy, book-filled, as if it also served as a study. ‘I didn’t realise Gavin was interested in bats.’

  ‘Well, to be honest, I’m not sure that he was,’ he admitted, taking the seat opposite me. ‘He never joined the society as a member, but he did come along with Ben two or three times. Nice lad, but a bit of a dreamer, I thought.’ He laughed. ‘I mean, he seemed more excited about being out in the woods at night than interested in the bats. We go out to monitor bat numbers, but he was always chatting on about Dracula and werewolves and stuff like that.’

  ‘That sounds like Gavin.’

  Alec stretched out his legs towards the glow of the wood-burning stove and crossed his ankles, making himself comfortable. ‘Do you know that there are eighteen different species of bat in this country and sixteen of those are found in Devon? And,’ he went on, warming to his theme, ‘Devon has the largest population of rare greater horseshoe bats in western Europe.’

  ‘And some of those are on the Moorworthy estate?’

  He nodded. ‘There’s a large roost in Moorworthy Pit.’

  ‘Is that what Ben was interested in, monitoring the numbers of greater horseshoes there?’

  ‘Well, not quite,’ he admitted. ‘We’ve known about the greater horseshoe bats for years. Course, we still monitor their numbers. But a couple of years back there had been sightings of barbastelles. Now they are very rare,’ he told me, holding up a finger, ‘threatened as a species. And they don’t roost in caves or mines, they roost in hollow trees.’ He stood up, searched his shelves for a book and began leafing through it until he found a picture. ‘There!’ he showed me. ‘That’s a barbastelle. See?’

  I’ve always thought bats were ugly little buggers and the barbastelle was no exception. It had a squashed-in, leathery face like a tiny gorilla’s. ‘And these have been seen in Moorworthy woods?’

  Alec nodded enthusiastically, taking back the book. ‘They like mature trees, broad-leaved woodland. Ben was very keen to carry out a transect of the area …’

  ‘Transect?’ I repeated.

  ‘It’s just a walk, really,’ he explained. ‘You walk for an hour, traversing a specified area, carrying a recording device. You can analyse the recordings later and identify the bat species present. Well, the society had always had free access until then, no problem. But shortly after the discovery of the barbastelles, Mr Westershall had the woods fenced off.’

  ‘Do you know why?’

  Alec shrugged. ‘He said it was dangerous, said some old shaft had opened up that no one knew about and he had a duty to protect the public. Well, there was no argument, really, was there? I mean, you can’t quarrel with public safety. Anyway, it’s all on his property, so what could we do? But Ben was furious, he—’ His mouth clamped shut suddenly as if he was afraid to say more, afraid his emotions would betray him. He stared into the flames of the wood-burner.

  ‘He went back there, didn’t he?’ I prompted. ‘The night he died?’

  Alec nodded. ‘What they didn’t say in that newspaper report was that he’d been chased out of those woods before that night. He’d got through the fence under cover of darkness.’ He chuckled in spite of himself. ‘He took wire cutters with him. He was determined to carry out this transect. He said he saw lights coming from the old mineshaft, from Moorworthy Pit − before he was spotted and had to leg it.’

  ‘Is that possible – the lights, I mean? The shaft is disused, isn’t it?’

  ‘Hasn’t been worked in a hundred years,’ he confirmed. ‘But someone was there.’

  We were both silent for a moment, thoughtful, the only sound the crackle of logs in the wood-burner and the distant tinkling of music from the television in the next room. Then Alec spoke again. ‘My grandfather was a tin miner, you know, and his father before him. And he worked at Moorworthy. The old shaft in the woods, where the greater horseshoes roost now, was shutting down, even in his time, so then he worked at Applecote Pit.’

  ‘On the farmland next door?’

  ‘That’s right.’ He shot me a keen glance. ‘Do you know how it’s done, tin mining? A lot of it is open work, you know, open-cast. Been going on for centuries on the moor, like that. But sometimes they sink a shaft, deep, maybe fifty feet,
like Moorworthy. Applecote was open-cast for a century or more,’ he went on, ‘then they sunk shafts from the bottom of it − that’s what they used to do if they kept finding ore, and maybe dug an adit—’

  I stopped him. ‘Adit?’

  ‘Sorry.’ He smiled. ‘An adit is just a tunnel − it gives a level access to the shaft for the workers. Sometimes they’d be forced to dig one to drain water off, if they were working down deep enough.’

  ‘Where exactly was Ben’s body found?’

  ‘At the foot of some rocks.’ Alec laughed softly, but it was a bitter, mirthless sound. ‘He was determined to go back to that shaft in Moorworthy, find out what was going on. He was convinced the bats were being threatened. He’d have been nowhere near those rocks where they found his body. They were over half a mile away, surrounded by open ground, there are no bats there.’

  ‘The inquest said he’d lost his way in the dark.’

  ‘It was a full moon that night and Ben wasn’t stupid. He’d have known where he was going.’

  ‘The inquest said—’

  ‘That he was high on cocaine?’ Alec’s lips pursed angrily. ‘That boy never took drugs in his life. If there was cocaine in his system, it was because someone forced it on him.’

  ‘You think he was murdered?’

  ‘I do.’ His voice shook. ‘Someone killed that lad and threw his body off those rocks.’

  ‘I’m sure that’s what Gavin thought,’ I said. ‘He leapt at the invitation to go to the Moorworthy fete. I think he saw it as an opportunity to discover what happened to Ben, take a good look around in the woods, but … someone stopped him.’

  Alec was nodding grimly.

  ‘Did you ever talk to the police after Ben was killed? Tell them his suspicions, about the lights that he had seen coming from the old shaft?’

  ‘I did. They said it was just all hallucinations, part of his drug-taking.’ He snorted in disgust. ‘It makes me sick to think about it.’

  I hesitated before I asked the next question. ‘So, who do you think killed him?’