Dead Man's Lane

by Kate Ellis

  By Kate Ellis

  Wesley Peterson series:

  The Merchant’s House

  The Armada Boy

  An Unhallowed Grave

  The Funeral Boat

  The Bone Garden

  A Painted Doom

  The Skeleton Room

  The Plague Maiden

  A Cursed Inheritance

  The Marriage Hearse

  The Shining Skull

  The Blood Pit

  A Perfect Death

  The Flesh Tailor

  The Jackal Man

  The Cadaver Game

  The Shadow Collector

  The Shroud Maker

  The Death Season

  The House of Eyes

  The Mermaid’s Scream

  The Mechanical Devil

  Dead Man’s Lane

  Albert Lincoln series:

  A High Mortality of Doves The Boy Who Lived with the Dead Joe Plantagenet series:

  Seeking the Dead

  Playing With Bones

  Copyright

  Published by Piatkus

  ISBN: 978-0-349-41827-8

  All characters and events in this publication, other than those clearly in the public domain, are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2019 by Kate Ellis The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.

  The publisher is not responsible for websites (or their content) that are not owned by the publisher.

  Piatkus

  Little, Brown Book Group

  Carmelite House

  50 Victoria Embankment

  London EC4Y 0DZ

  www.littlebrown.co.uk

  www.hachette.co.uk

  Contents

  By Kate Ellis

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Author’s Note

  For Ivy Rose

  And many thanks to Jane Webster who kindly

  allowed her name to be used to help a very

  good cause (CLIC Sargent)

  1

  Linda Payne knew how to die convincingly. She’d yielded to the strangler’s rope so many times that it had become second nature. She’d perfected the look of innocent terror as her executioner approached with the noose in his outstretched hands. She’d even mastered a brief display of final defiance, showing the ultimate triumph of virtue over evil obsession.

  She knew her lines off by heart after reciting them to herself for weeks while she made up the bouquets she sold in her little florist’s shop opposite Tradmouth Market. Her assistant, Jen, probably thought she was mad but when you’d been entrusted with the title role it was vital to get everything right.

  It was dark by the time she’d said farewell to her fellow actors and left Tradmouth’s Arts Centre, glad she’d managed to bag a parking space nearby. She hadn’t eaten since lunchtime because she’d stayed late in the shop to deal with the flowers for a funeral the following day so she was hungry and eager to get home. But food wasn’t the only thing on her mind.

  As she drove she muttered her lines to herself. Even so, it was another character’s speech from Act Five that echoed around her head; words so fitting for her situation that Webster might have written them with her in mind.

  ‘I suffer now for what hath former been: sorrow is held to be the eldest child of sin.’

  At one time, many years ago, Linda had known plenty of sin and sorrow and she’d been trying to forget about them ever since. But who had really sinned? The answer to that question had once seemed so clear but now she wasn’t so certain.

  When she arrived at her cottage just outside Neston she noticed a small dark car parked a little way down the lane, tucked into a passing place with its lights off. For a brief moment its presence struck her as strange but she put it out of her mind as she pulled into the gate and brought her little florist’s van to a halt by the front door.

  She had first seen the cottage in the kinder weather of midsummer and she’d fallen in love with the place. Now, fifteen months later, the windows were letting in draughts and the place felt damp. Autumn was here and the branches of the green trees would soon be reaching naked to the sky like grasping skeletal hands. At this time of year she regretted her home’s isolation, especially in the hours of darkness.

  Keys at the ready, she opened the front door but as she crossed the threshold she sensed a movement to her left. Someone was there, waiting in the shadows, and she wondered whether the moment she’d dreaded for so many years had finally arrived. The moment when she’d be called upon to pay the price for another’s sins.

  ‘Hi. This is Tradmouth Community Radio broadcasting to you this chilly Monday evening. Still, the weather’s not too bad for October and, according to the forecast, there’ll be no rain and a gentle breeze till the weekend so for all you yachting types out there it’s sailor’s delight.’

  The presenter took a breath as he fumbled for the correct switch.

  ‘I see we have another caller on the line. Hi, caller, tell us your name.’

  There was an awkward silence.

  ‘We have a shy one here. What’s your name and where are you calling from?’ the presenter said, hiding his irritation behind forced jocularity. It wasn’t the first time a caller had lost their nerve at the prospect of being on air and it always annoyed him. Didn’t they know he was trying to make a programme – that if things went well he might get a chance to make it to BBC local radio?

  ‘Are you still there, caller? Don’t be coy. We’re all friends here.’

  ‘Hello.’ It was a man’s voice. Gruff and local.

  This one needed a little coaxing. ‘Where are you calling from?’ A direct question usually did the trick.

  ‘I don’t want to say. It’s just that I’ve found a body – bones, like. He told us not to say anything but—’

  The line went dead but the presenter broke the silence, feel
ing pleased with himself for his quick thinking. ‘Well, it looks like we’ve got a mystery on our hands, folks. Perhaps we should all be “Watching the Detectives” – and here’s Elvis Costello to help us do just that.’

  He started the track and called the police. The caller had sounded frightened so it was something he felt he couldn’t ignore.

  From the first diary of

  Lemuel Strange, gentleman

  30th August 1666

  I was sorely vexed by my wife’s complaints when I rose from my bed this morning.

  Yesterday came another letter from my cousin Reuben’s widow Frances begging me to make haste. Yet my wife has little sympathy for the unfortunate woman whose husband was done to death in such a grievous manner. My wife has the toothache and I told her to have the tooth drawn if it causes her pain but she says she is afraid and that her maid will prepare a poultice of cloves. I told her she must do as she wills but I will delay my journey to Devonshire no longer.

  From Frances’s letters I fear much is amiss. And I suspect she has not told me the worst of it.

  As I was waiting for the carriage to be brought to take me to St Paul’s my wife fainted to the ground, saying I should not leave her on the morrow. My cousin Reuben is dead, she said, and is beyond any help I can give him. I said it was my Christian duty to go to Frances’s aid and told the maid to look to her mistress for I will go whether or not her tooth troubles her.

  2

  ‘Someone’s handed this in at the front desk. Says he found it on the steps outside.’

  Detective Inspector Wesley Peterson looked up from his paperwork to see DS Rachel Tracey standing by his desk holding a dirty green plastic bag at arm’s length so it wouldn’t soil her crisp white shirt.

  ‘Don’t keep me in suspense. What’s in it?’

  ‘You did archaeology at university so it could be right up your street.’ She looked round. ‘We’d better put something on your desk before I … ’

  She spotted an unused exhibits bag on a nearby filing cabinet and cleared a space on Wesley’s desk for it before donning a pair of crime-scene gloves and lifting the skull carefully from its carrier bag as a cascade of dried soil trickled down. She placed it on the desk with exaggerated care and looked at Wesley expectantly, awaiting his verdict.

  He studied it for a while before he too put on a pair of gloves and picked it up to examine it more closely.

  ‘Judging by those brow ridges, it looks female to me, although I could be wrong. Possibly youngish. No dental work. It could well be old and none of our business but it’ll take an expert to confirm that for sure. Was the person who left it caught on CCTV?’

  ‘I’ll ask someone to check,’ said Rachel, suppressing a yawn.

  ‘You look tired. You’re not overdoing the wedding preparations, are you?’

  ‘I’m fine.’ She wasn’t going to tell him that the mention of her coming wedding filled her with apprehension, especially when that reminder came from Wesley. ‘Have you heard the latest? Someone rang the Community Radio station last night to say they’d found a body – or rather bones.’

  ‘Could this skull be connected?’

  Rachel shrugged. Anything was possible. ‘They’ve sent over a recording of the call. Caller doesn’t say much, mind you.’

  ‘Man or woman?’

  ‘Man. Sounds local. Wonder why they didn’t call us.’

  ‘Could be someone who doesn’t like the police for some reason. We should play it to the boss. He might recognise the voice,’ Wesley said, knowing DCI Gerry Heffernan’s encyclopaedic knowledge of the area’s criminals, petty and otherwise. ‘I want this skull taken to Dr Bowman at the mortuary and the bag it was in sent to Forensics for thorough examination. If I’m wrong about it being old, we need to know.’

  However, by the end of the day Wesley was none the wiser. The call to the radio station had been made from an unregistered pay-as-you-go mobile and even though Gerry said the caller’s voice was vaguely familiar, he hadn’t been able to place it.

  ‘The line “he told us not to say anything” interests me,’ said Wesley as he sat down by Gerry’s desk. ‘It suggests more than one person found these bones, if they exist. And who told them to keep quiet?’

  Gerry looked up from his paperwork. ‘Could be someone’s idea of a joke.’

  ‘The skull’s real enough.’

  ‘Didn’t you say it was old?’

  ‘That was my first impression, but it would need to be examined by an expert.’

  ‘Then let’s hope you’re right and it’s not our problem.’

  Wesley left Gerry’s office wishing he could feel so confident.

  Whenever Grace Compton remembered her distant teenage years she thought of Wesley Peterson. Growing up in Dulwich she’d seen him regularly at the local church attended by her family and his; a church popular with the West Indian community. They’d been members of the same youth club and Wesley’s mother had been her GP back then. Although the Petersons hailed from Trinidad and her own parents from Barbados, the two families had been close and Wesley’s sister, Maritia, had been one of her best friends while they were at school. Then, like a lot of youthful friendships, they’d grown apart once they went their separate ways: she up to Manchester University to read architecture; Maritia to Oxford to read medicine and Wesley to Exeter to study archaeology.

  She was still in occasional touch with Maritia who, like Wesley, had settled in Devon and was now married to a vicar. Maritia had a young son but whenever they communicated Grace rarely asked after the child, preferring instead the subject of her own glittering career as partner in a top London architectural practice. Over the past couple of years she’d persuaded herself that she pitied Maritia; that it was a dreadful shame that such a talented woman doctor was shut away in some rural backwater working as a part-time GP when she could be carving out a brilliant career in some metropolitan teaching hospital just as her father, the distinguished cardiac surgeon Mr Joshua Peterson, had done.

  As for Wesley, she’d been astonished when he’d chosen to study archaeology at university and even more surprised when he’d decided to join the police force. The Petersons were clever and, in Grace’s opinion, they hadn’t made the most of their gifts. Even so, there were times when she wondered whether they were more content with their lot than she was.

  Grace had dated Wesley for a short period during their adolescent years and whenever she contacted Maritia she could never resist asking about him. In fact she had a nagging suspicion that Wesley was one of the reasons she’d kept in touch with her old friend – but Grace had never been one to acknowledge her own weaknesses, and Wesley Peterson might have become a major weakness if things had worked out differently.

  Then two years ago something had happened to make her realise that her feelings for Wesley had been little more than a schoolgirl crush. Someone else had entered her life; someone who’d shaken her ordered professional existence to the core. But when tragedy had struck she’d worked hard to convince herself that her former instincts had been right all along. Love only causes pain and you’re better off without it.

  Once what she termed her ‘moment of madness’ was over, she’d poured her energies into her work creating new buildings – her contribution to posterity. The Compton Wynyard Partnership had grown in size and prestige and had recently been awarded the contract to design an exclusive new holiday village nestling in the rolling countryside two miles outside the port of Tradmouth; a project that would keep her and her staff occupied for quite a while to come.

  According to the plans there were to be twenty-five luxury cottages, each blended into the landscape with glass frontages and curved turf roofs, all clustered around a Jacobean farmhouse that was to be refurbished to provide seven luxury apartments – an attractive historic centrepiece to the development. No expense would be spared by the developer Hamer Holdings and the model on public display in the local planning office looked extremely impressive, even though she said so herself
.

  The Strangefields Farm development was Grace’s baby and she felt protective towards it, wounded by every objection and annoyed by every interference by the local Planning Department – and by the County Archaeological Unit which had become involved because of the historic nature of the site.

  Courtesy of the developer, she was staying in the Marina Hotel in Tradmouth and, as Maritia – and Wesley – lived in the area, she knew she ought to seize the opportunity to catch up with the brother and sister who, at one time, had played such a major role in her life. It had taken her a couple of days to get round to making the call and now, as she tapped out Maritia’s number, she realised to her surprise that she felt nervous.

  ‘Hi Maritia. It’s me … Grace.’

  ‘Hello, Grace. How are you?’ Maritia said, clearly pleased to hear her old friend’s voice.

  ‘You’re not going to believe this but I’m in Tradmouth working on that new holiday village on Dead Man’s Lane. I don’t know whether you’ve heard about it but it’s been keeping me incredibly busy. Having said that, I’m hoping to have some free time over the next few days so do you fancy getting together?’

  ‘How about tomorrow?’

  Maritia sounded keen, something Grace put down to a longing to escape her humdrum existence for a few hours.

  ‘I’ll check my diary. I’ve got to meet one of the subcontractors but … ’ She paused, not wanting to seem too available. ‘Lunchtime tomorrow’s OK. How about grabbing something to eat in Tradmouth? My treat.’

  ‘Perfect. I’ve swapped my day off tomorrow with one of the other doctors but Dominic’s still booked in at the childminder’s so I’m free all day. I can recommend a lovely little Italian place.’

  ‘Italian sounds good. How’s Wesley?’ she asked, trying her best to make the question sound casual.

  ‘He’s fine. Busy as usual.’

  After more pleasantries Grace heard a toddler shouting for attention in the background – then a scream and a howling cry.

  ‘I’ll have to go,’ Maritia said. ‘See you tomorrow. Twelve thirty.’

  Grace heard the dialling tone and felt unexpectedly irritated that her friend’s priorities had so clearly changed. She suspected that when they met the following day they might have little in common – apart from Wesley. They’d always have him.