Dead Man's Lane

by Kate Ellis

  ‘Neighbours see anything?’

  Gerry snorted. ‘They all had an attack of blindness and deafness at the appropriate moment. Amazing how often that happens, isn’t it? We’re widening the house-to-house visits to cover the whole village. Someone might have been awake but I’m not getting my hopes up. Lots of second homes and people out at work.’

  ‘No chance of CCTV round here I don’t suppose?’

  ‘Chance’d be a fine thing.’

  ‘Time of death?’

  Gerry glanced at the pathologist, who was bending over the body, deep in concentration. ‘You know what Colin’s like,’ he said, lowering his voice. ‘He claims he can’t be accurate but when I pressed him he reckoned sometime this morning – between eight o’clock and eleven. The anonymous call came in at two thirty.’

  ‘Not our killer then?’

  ‘Unless he had a fit of conscience and decided it was wrong to leave the old boy lying there.’ He looked at his watch. ‘I’m told his carer’s due to come in at five to give him his dinner.’

  ‘When was the last visit?’

  ‘According to the agency she called this morning at eight to give him breakfast and leave him some sandwiches for lunch. They’re still there, which fits with Colin’s timings.’

  ‘Apart from his killer she was the last person to see him alive so we’ll have to speak to her.’

  ‘Trish is seeing her later.’ He sighed. ‘Colin’ll do Bert’s PM after Linda Payne’s first thing tomorrow. We’ve set things rolling so why don’t we get some rest before the onslaught? Get home to Pam.’ Gerry grinned. ‘And your beloved mother-in-law.’

  The mention of Della made Wesley’s spirits sink. But she needed looking after while she recovered from injuries sustained in a car accident connected with one of his previous cases so he hadn’t uttered even the slightest complaint to Pam, although recently he suspected that he’d been spending more time at the office than was strictly necessary. Now his workload had just increased dramatically he’d no longer need to make up excuses.

  ‘How is the old girl?’

  ‘Don’t ever let her hear you calling her that. In her mind she’s still eighteen – won’t stop trawling through internet dating sites.’

  ‘Is she still stuck in that wheelchair?’

  A frown appeared on Wesley’s face. ‘Yes. She’ll be with us for a while yet.’

  Della wasn’t the easiest of house guests and her strongly voiced opinions didn’t always match Wesley’s own – but since she was Pam’s mother he could hardly ask her to leave.

  He ignored Gerry’s suggestion and worked late and when he arrived home something made him hesitate before getting out of the driving seat. He’d arranged to meet Grace the following lunchtime and he wondered whether, with so much work on, he should put her off. But what she’d said about seeing someone from her past and needing his advice had intrigued him. Or was it that he just wanted to see her again? He couldn’t be sure.

  14

  The following morning Wesley felt overwhelmed. As well as the prospect of a tough day ahead at work, Della had been particularly irritating at breakfast, insisting that Pam make scrambled eggs for her even though she had to get to work and ensure the children were ready for school. He’d been glad when Pam told her she was having toast like everyone else but Della had sulked so he wasn’t looking forward to returning home that evening. Della’s sulks could last for days.

  In clement weather he liked to walk to work because trudging up and down the steep hill into Tradmouth a couple of times a day served just as well as the gym sessions he had no time for. Today, though, he took the car because he had two murders to deal with and the rain was falling in horizontal sheets, veiling the town and the river beyond in grey mist.

  When Rachel greeted him at the CID office door she seemed to be in a surprisingly good mood. ‘The boss says we’re using this as an incident room for both cases. I know it’s not ideal but we’re bringing in back-up from Neston so at least we’ll have some more bodies.’ She realised what she’d said and put her hand to her mouth. ‘I could have put that better, couldn’t I?’

  ‘You seem more cheerful today.’

  ‘I feel so much better after a good night’s sleep. Good job you made me go home early last night – I feel ready to face the world again now.’ The corners of her mouth twitched upwards in a sad smile. ‘Anyway, keeping busy’s probably the perfect cure for pre-wedding nerves.’

  ‘Don’t know what you’re worrying about. All you have to do is turn up looking beautiful.’

  She lowered her gaze and he thought he detected a blush. Perhaps his words were ill judged but they’d left his lips before his brain had had a chance to censor them.

  He looked at his watch. ‘I’ve got Linda Payne’s postmortem in half an hour.’

  ‘I can’t imagine who’d want to kill her, Wes. She was a nice woman. Jen said she’d been very good to one of their regular customers when her mum was burgled – went round to the old lady’s with some flowers – on the house.’

  He couldn’t think of anything appropriate to say so he made for Gerry’s office, stopping every so often at desks to check whether anything new had come in. But although extensive house-to-house enquiries had been made in Stokeworthy nobody had seen or heard anything suspicious around Bert Cummings’ bungalow at the relevant time. As for Linda Payne, she was last seen at a rehearsal for The Duchess of Malfi on Monday evening. She’d left straight afterwards to drive home and she’d seemed her usual self. No hint of fear, nor mention of anyone who might want her dead.

  An hour later Wesley was standing beside Gerry in Tradmouth Hospital’s mortuary. In the new mortuary at Morbay Hospital where Colin sometimes worked, the facilities were state-of-the-art, allowing the police to stand some way away behind a glass screen, but here at Tradmouth they couldn’t avoid being close to the action and Wesley tried to avoid looking at the body on the steel table while Colin went about his work, keeping up a running commentary for the benefit of the microphone hanging above his head.

  ‘She was in her late thirties. Slightly built. Looked after herself although I suspect she enjoyed a drink or three. In good health – until someone strangled her,’ he said with a smile looking directly at Gerry. ‘She’d never given birth. And there are abrasions to her fingers, both old and recent.’

  ‘She was a florist,’ said Wesley.

  ‘Then they could have been caused by rose thorns. Occupational hazard. No sign of violent sexual activity although of course I can’t rule out consensual sex; the water will have destroyed any evidence of that sort of thing.’

  Wesley was relieved when the pathologist asked his assistant to finish off and turned his attention to his audience.

  ‘What’s the verdict, Colin?’ Gerry asked. ‘Cause of death?’

  ‘The head wound probably left her stunned but the actual cause of death was strangulation. As I suspected her killer used a rope which has left a distinctive pattern of marks on the flesh.’ Colin hesitated. ‘I’ve been having a good look at the wounds on the face and as far as I can see they were made with a sharp blade, probably serrated down one edge. He made a hell of a mess.’

  Wesley noticed Gerry had turned pale. Then he spoke almost in a whisper, as though he was thinking out loud. ‘Jackson Temples rendered his victims unconscious with a blunt instrument, before strangling them with rope and mutilating their faces with a knife.’

  ‘Isn’t Jackson Temples safely locked up?’ said Wesley.

  ‘Life sentence with a recommendation that he serve at least thirty years. He’s out of the frame but the similarities can’t be ignored, can they?’ Gerry turned to Colin, trying to regain his composure. ‘Anything else you can tell us?’

  ‘Fortunately, in spite of the water I found a couple of fibres adhering to the neck which appear to be a natural material so it’s possibly an old-fashioned hemp rope rather than the man-made stuff they use on most boats these days. We’ll know more once the lab have done
their work. My money’s on it having come from a boat – but I’m afraid that hardly narrows it down around these parts.’

  ‘Like you say, natural rope’s rarely used on yachts these days,’ said Gerry, the experienced sailor. ‘So it could be from an older boat – or something left in an old boat yard.’

  ‘That’s possible.’

  ‘What about time of death?’

  ‘You should know better than to try and pin me down on that one, Gerry. The only thing I can say is that she died roughly four hours after she’d eaten – give or take a couple of hours.’

  ‘She went to a play rehearsal on Monday night which, according to witnesses, started at seven and lasted two and a half hours. If she’d eaten beforehand, attended the rehearsal then driven straight home her killer might have been waiting for her there,’ said Wesley, recalling what Rachel had said about her visit to Linda’s cottage before her body was found. The front door had been unlocked and there’d been signs of an intruder.

  ‘That might fit,’ said Colin. ‘I’ve sent samples off so I might have more for you in due course.’

  Wesley thanked him and moved to leave but Gerry hung back. He and Colin were old friends and they liked to pass the time of day over a cup of Colin’s specially chosen tea and the special stash of superior biscuits he kept in his office.

  Wesley, however, had other things on his mind. He wanted to take a look at Linda Payne’s cottage for himself, although he would have preferred to have done so before the CSIs had been in and scattered their metal plates, fingerprint powder and markers all over the place. Once a crime scene had been processed it lost its special atmosphere; that tantalising imprint of the last souls to inhabit the place.

  He also wanted to talk to Linda’s fellow Harbourside Players. The fact that the character she was playing had also been strangled with a rope suggested a connection to the production and he’d heard that amateur theatre could throw up all kinds of jealousies and resentments. The stab wounds to the face hinted at bitter hatred but could her murder really have been a result of theatrical rivalry? Though the idea seemed far-fetched, after so many years in the police he had learned that people often behave in surprising ways.

  He left Gerry with Colin and walked back to the station, so preoccupied that he didn’t see Neil waiting for him at the entrance until he was a few feet away.

  ‘You haven’t been answering your phone. I’ve been trying to get hold of you,’ Neil said accusingly. ‘When I called Pam yesterday evening she said you weren’t home.’

  ‘She told me you’d called but I didn’t get back till half ten last night. Two murders.’ For a moment he felt a pang of irritation that Neil expected him to be at his beck and call. ‘You haven’t found any more skulls, have you?’ he said, half joking.

  ‘Not yet.’ Neil sounded disappointed. ‘But you know that call to the radio station – someone saying they’d found bones? Well, when I mentioned it to the builders they were very cagey so I reckon some of them know something. It wouldn’t surprise me if more bones are found in that house. They’ve only stripped half the building – who knows what’ll turn up when they do the rest. Jackson Temples used to live there. Think they might belong to some undiscovered victims?’

  Wesley hesitated, unwilling to commit himself. ‘When human remains are found in a house that once belonged to a killer it’s hard to imagine the two things aren’t connected, I suppose.’

  ‘I’ve arranged to have some geophysics equipment taken down to the cellar. The floor doesn’t appear to have been disturbed recently but I’d like to rule out any unexplained burials and it shouldn’t take long. Hopefully we’ll be in and out before the developer even notices.’

  ‘Thanks, that might save the police a job.’

  ‘No problem. Me and the conservation officer are keeping a close eye on the place ’cause I wouldn’t put it past Joe Hamer to cut corners heritage-wise. Not that there’ll be much left from Temples’ day once the builders have devastated the place.’ There was a long pause. ‘I believe that the skull’s been sent to a hot new forensic anthropologist called Jemima Baine in Exeter. She used to work at the Centre for Anatomy and Human Identification at the University of Dundee. They’re acknowledged experts in the field so we’re lucky to have her.’

  ‘You’ve met her?’

  Neil grinned. ‘A few times.’

  ‘How’s Lucy?’ Wesley asked, suspecting Neil’s enthusiasm for Jemima Baine wasn’t just due to her professional skills.

  ‘She’s helping out on a university dig at the moment – Roman stuff outside Exeter. Mind you, she’s missing the archaeology up in Orkney.’

  Wesley said nothing. He and Pam liked Lucy. She’d been a steadying influence on their old friend but if things were cooling off and she was thinking of returning to Orkney there was nothing they could do about it.

  Neil headed off towards the car park leaving Wesley feeling uncomfortable. If it did turn out that the skull from Strangefields Farm was connected to Jackson Temples then a whole fresh investigation would have to be started and he knew it might well fall to him to interview the man in prison.

  That wasn’t something he was looking forward to.

  15

  When Gerry finally returned to the office after half an hour of tea and gossip at the mortuary, he agreed with Wesley’s suggestion that they both visit Linda Payne’s cottage. It was possibly the scene of her murder – unless she hadn’t made it home that night and her killer had waylaid her en route. There’d been no evidence on her body to tell them where she died: no trace evidence; no fibres from carpets or minute samples of soil or plant life. The killer had disposed of the clothes she’d been wearing and the water had done the rest. A search had been instigated for her clothes but there were so many places to dispose of them in the area; places they were unlikely to ever be found.

  He drove down the narrow lane, afraid an agricultural vehicle might come looming round one of the many blind bends at any moment. As he drove he noticed Gerry clinging to his seat, his knuckles white as though he was aboard a roller coaster, which did little for his confidence.

  When they reached their destination they found several police vehicles parked outside. The forensic team were hard at work, dashing any hopes Wesley had nursed of being alone in the place to absorb its atmosphere. He looked at his watch. He’d arranged to meet Grace at one o’clock, something he’d mentioned to nobody: not Pam, not Gerry, not Rachel, not Neil. It almost felt as though he was harbouring a guilty secret.

  After donning the appropriate protective clothing, Wesley strolled from room to room, taking in his surroundings. It was a small cottage, tastefully furnished and painted in the sort of expensive chalky shades that weren’t available at your local DIY store. Linda Payne had been a woman of taste, but then the fact that she’d been a florist and amateur actor hinted at a well-developed creative side. Gerry had often observed that you can learn a lot about how someone died from how they lived and on this they were of one mind.

  As Wesley looked around he noticed a script lying on the coffee table in the living room and picked it up with gloved hands.

  ‘It’s her play script,’ he said to Gerry. ‘The Duchess of Malfi. It has all her stage directions and notes on it so I think we can assume it’s the one she took to rehearsals, although we’ll have to check.’

  Gerry caught on quickly. ‘So she dumped it here when she got in from the Arts Centre, which means she made it home and met her killer here. Either he called after she arrived or he was waiting for her.’

  ‘There’s no sign of a break-in?’ Wesley looked enquiringly at one of the CSIs, a small ginger man wielding a fingerprint brush, and received a shake of the head in response.

  ‘Nothing obvious. Unless whoever it was had a key,’ the CSI suggested.

  ‘He’s after your job, Wes,’ Gerry quipped, making the CSI turn an unattractive shade of red.

  ‘He’s got a point,’ Wesley said with a reassuring glance at the CSI. ‘It migh
t have been someone she knew well, or a relative. According to Rachel she never mentioned her family.’

  ‘Which means we need to dig deeper. No man is an island … or woman in this case. Who said that?’

  ‘John Donne.’

  ‘Well, he was right.’

  As Wesley looked round he noticed the half-open drawer in the sideboard. ‘Rach reckons someone searched the place.’

  ‘So our man kills her then looks for something.’

  ‘Or she walks in on him while he’s at it.’

  ‘What was he after, Wes? And did he find it?’

  Wesley didn’t answer. He was already halfway up the stairs, making for the bedrooms. Rachel had told him that Linda had used the smaller of the two rooms as an office and that was where she’d seen the most evidence of an intruder.

  He looked first in Linda’s bedroom: a feminine room where the ornate iron bed was neatly made with a sumptuous velvet bedspread and matching cushions. A large teddy bear lounged against the cushions like a louche Victorian gentleman in an opium den.

  The door to the richly carved antique pine wardrobe stood ajar and Wesley opened it wider. The clothes inside had been pushed aside and the shoes stored at the bottom in neat transparent boxes – how Pam would have envied that level of organisation – had been tipped out onto the wardrobe’s wooden base.

  Wesley suspected that the chest of drawers had been searched too, as had the bedside tables, and whoever was responsible had shoved everything back willy-nilly. The room was in a state most people would have regarded as normal. If it hadn’t been for Rachel telling him about Linda’s obsessive neatness, he might not have found it suspicious.

  He crossed the tiny landing to the bathroom, which was as gleaming and clutter-free as a showroom display, suggesting Rachel’s opinion of the dead woman had been spot on.

  The white painted shelves in the small office occupied the whole of one wall. Neat box files stood there, uniform as soldiers on parade, except that some had been taken down and now lay on the desk.