by John Dean
It was the following Monday morning and none of the five people in his office at Abbey Road Police Station were about to start the week by doing something that ill-advised. Even the archaeologists kept their doubts to themselves. Dr Hamer, perhaps sensing safety in numbers, had brought his colleague, the nervous-looking 28-year-old military archaeologist Elspeth Roberts, to the meeting.
Colley took a couple of moments to peruse the two other people completing the gathering crammed into the small office. As he looked at Peter Reynolds, the ghost of a smile played on the sergeant’s lips, the presence of the Home Office pathologist always guaranteed good sport. Reynolds knew that Blizzard had never liked him. Next to him, his excitement hardly suppressed, was Detective Inspector Graham Ross, divisional head of forensics at Abbey Road Police Station, dressed as immaculately as ever.
‘Well?’ asked Blizzard, irritated by the smug expressions on the faces of Reynolds and Ross. ‘Have I taken leave of my senses?’
‘I hate to say it,’ said Peter Reynolds, ‘but you have not, and I speak as someone who would happily have signed the papers to have you sectioned many years ago.’
‘Thank you for the sentiment,’ murmured Blizzard. ‘So, what have you found?’
‘There is indeed something very wrong with the grave,’ said Reynolds.
‘He’s right, guv,’ said Graham Ross, unable to contain himself any longer. ‘We’re looking at a murder!’
‘That is a preposterous statement!’ exclaimed Hamer. ‘And even if…’
‘There will be plenty of time for your comments later,’ said the chief inspector. ‘Perhaps. But for the moment, who’s murder are we looking at?’
‘I am coming to that,’ said the pathologist. ‘Having spent my weekend examining the skeletons, and missing out on a good game of golf, might I say…’
‘No, you may not,’ grunted Blizzard.
‘You are such a delightful man,’ said Reynolds. ‘Anyway, Mr Hamer here…’
‘Actually, it’s Doctor Hamer,’ said the archaeologist.
‘Yes, well whatever he is,’ said Reynolds, fishing out some papers from his battered briefcase. ‘He gave me names of the POWs from the camp.’
‘And?’ asked the chief inspector.
‘I have to say first that proving the identity beyond all doubt will be extremely difficult after all these years,’ said the pathologist. ‘But the name tags on the skeletons do match the recorded names of POWs who died of influenza in the winter of 1944/45. Examination of the skeletons confirms that they date from around that time. It’s the same with all fifteen of them.’
‘Fifteen?’ queried Blizzard. ‘I thought there were sixteen?’
‘Indeed there are,’ said Reynolds. ‘Although it is difficult to be absolutely precise, I would say number sixteen died ten to fifteen years ago.’
Reynolds sat back in his chair and, with a smug look on his face, waited for the reaction. It came within the blink of an eye.
‘Bloody hell’s bells!’ exclaimed Blizzard.
‘Indeed,’ said Reynolds.
‘So are you saying he was never a POW at the camp?’ asked Colley, equally taken aback.
‘That’s the weird thing,’ said Reynolds, holding up a brown file. ‘According to the camp records, Horst Knoefler was an inmate and was released sometime in early 1946, not long before the camp closed. And he seems to have been alive and well when he walked out of the front gate.’
‘And he was the murdered one, was he?’ asked Blizzard.
‘Indeed he was,’ said Reynolds. ‘There can be no doubt that, not only did our Herr Knoefler somehow clamber into that grave all those years after his comrades in arms, but it seems that someone gave him a helping hand.’
The atmosphere in the office was electric and Reynolds and Ross revelled in the astonished look on Blizzard’s face as he tried to digest their revelations. It took a lot to surprise the chief inspector so such moments were to be enjoyed with relish; it might be a long time before one came again. Blizzard glanced at his sergeant.
‘So I was right, David,’ he said. ‘Something was wrong.’
‘So it would seem, guv,’ said Colley, turning to Hamer. ‘Can I ask where the records of the POWs came from? I mean, are we sure they are genuine?’
‘We believe so,’ said Hamer, trying to recover his own composure. ‘Two of our researchers found them among papers in the local history section of the city library. They had been there for many years, gathering dust without anyone taking much notice of them.’
‘That’s archaeologists for you,’ said Blizzard.
‘I meant the papers had been there for years,’ replied Hamer tartly.
‘Of course, you did,’ said Blizzard.
‘So, how was he murdered, Mr Reynolds?’ asked Colley.
‘See that?’ said Reynolds, shooting a sly look at Blizzard. ‘Such politeness. Most refreshing in the young. Maybe it’s a generation thing, Chief Inspector.’
‘Just tell us the sodding cause of death,’ grunted Blizzard.
‘A blow to the back of the head. The skull shows signs of significant trauma and there is an unmistakeable sign of a fracture.’
‘Any idea what he was struck with?’
‘Could be anything, a block of wood, a shovel, a sledgehammer, a piece of rock. Whatever it was, it was wielded with enough force to kill him pretty much instantly, I would say.’
‘Graham,’ said Blizzard, glancing at the forensics chief, ‘I take it our Mr Reynolds has not embarked on a flight of fancy?’
‘Not sure he does flights of fancy but there’s not much doubt about it.’
‘Yeah, but how do we know?’ insisted Colley. ‘I mean, couldn’t this Knoefler fellow have been murdered in 1945 and dumped in there with the others at the time?’
‘Exactly,’ said Hamer fervently, recognising a way of getting his people back onto the site.
‘We thought of that,’ said Ross. ‘We examined the rotted material on the bones. It took a while as it was in a real mess but we are sure the fifteen were wearing camp uniforms whereas Knoefler was wearing modern clothes, possibly a dark pullover of some kind and slacks. And his shoes were modern. Very nice actually, very stylish, wouldn’t have minded wearing them myself.’
‘Thank you, Versace,’ grunted Blizzard. ‘But how do we know who he is? Surely he was not still wearing his name tag after all these years?’
‘No, he wasn’t, but he was wearing a watch that had his name engraved on the back.’
‘A name, yes,’ said Blizzard. ‘But that does not necessarily mean that it is his name. Is it possible that he is not Horst Knoefler?’
‘Yes, of course it is, but for the moment it’s all we have to go on so I, for one, am going to call him Horst Knoefler.’
There were a few moments of silence as everyone digested what they had heard.
‘So what do you reckon?’ asked Colley at length, looking at the thoughtful chief inspector.
‘It is certainly intriguing,’ mused Blizzard, leaning back in his chair with a look of satisfaction on his face.
‘I assume that means we cannot examine the graves any further?’ asked Hamer gloomily.
‘Or the camp. It is now all a potential murder scene,’ said Blizzard. ‘And it’s all mine until I tell you different. DI Ross here will want to spend more time out there and the last thing he wants is you running about with your clipboards.’
‘I must protest,’ exclaimed Hamer, half standing up. ‘There is important historical research that we need to do there before the…’
‘Protest all you like,’ snapped Blizzard. ‘But when it comes to murder, my needs take precedence over a bunch of archaeologists.’
He looked at Elspeth Roberts, who had sat through the meeting with ever-widening eyes.
‘You have been very quiet, Mrs Roberts,’ said the chief inspector. ‘Your colleague here insisted you be present at this meeting because of your expert knowledge. Do you have anything to say which might t
hrow some light onto this somewhat strange occurrence?’
She looked at him, an anxious look on her face. For a moment, it seemed that the words had choked in her throat but somehow she managed to regain what little composure remained, and opened her mouth.
‘Well,’ she said, her voice tremulous with nerves, her hand anxiously twisting and untwisting her wedding ring, ‘it does rather make you wonder.’
‘Wonder what?’ asked Blizzard, fixing her with one of his stern looks.
‘Well.’ She was now well and truly flustered. ‘Wonder what happened, I suppose.’
She looked around the room unhappily. ‘I mean,’ she said. ‘Doesn’t it?’ Her voice tailed off and she flushed red as she noticed everyone in the room staring at her, apart from an embarrassed Hamer, who looked downwards, seemingly suddenly fascinated with his shoes. Colley glanced at the chief inspector.
‘Such wise words in one so young,’ said Blizzard, with a faint twitch of the lips as he stood up and walked over to the window.
‘Still,’ he said brightly, turning back into the room, ‘it’s always good to have an expert in on these little shindigs, isn’t it boys?’
Colley tried to stifle his laugh but failed.
Chapter three
‘This gets stranger and stranger,’ said Colley, walking into Detective Chief Superintendent Arthur Ronald’s office without knocking, and tossing a brown file onto the desk.
‘You sound like something out of Alice in Wonderland,’ said Blizzard, who was sitting at the desk with his boss. ‘I expect the sodding white rabbit to come running past any minute.’
‘You’d only arrest him,’ said Colley.
It was three thirty that afternoon and the chief inspector and Ronald, his direct superior at Abbey Road, were taking a break from the intense pressures brought about by the opening of a murder inquiry.
‘How could it possibly get stranger?’ asked Ronald, looking up at the sergeant as he slumped in a chair in the corner of the room.
‘It’s all down to man’s best friend.’
Noticing their bemused expressions, Colley grinned.
‘Wuff-wuff,’ he said, putting his hands together in front of his face and making panting sounds.
‘Have you the faintest idea what he is talking about?’ asked Ronald, glancing at Blizzard.
‘Not usually,’ said the chief inspector.
His face broke into a rare smile as he saw the superintendent’s expression. Blizzard and Ronald went back more than 20 years, having first worked together as rookie uniform officers before their careers took different paths. The men had been reunited at Abbey Road when Ronald assumed command of CID in the area and demanded Blizzard be moved from the drugs squad and promoted as his new detective chief inspector in Western Division. Not everyone in the corridors of power welcomed the idea. Indeed, some resisted it fiercely because Blizzard’s brusque style had never endeared him to many at headquarters. Ronald viewed it as one of those things which had to be borne if you wanted the best. And Western CID had cut crime by more than a fifth in the mixture of its urban and rural areas.
They were very different men. University-educated Ronald, married with two teenaged children, was a slightly pudgy, balding man with ruddy cheeks and eyes with bags which sagged darkly. Given to constant worrying about mortgages and university fees, and a little prone, in Blizzard’s view, to taking too much notice about what other people thought about him, he was not yet fifty but looked older.
‘Perhaps you would like to explain the dog impression,’ said Blizzard, picking up the file from the desk and glancing at the front cover. ‘I seem to recall the name Willy Ramage – I assume he is related to Henderson?’
‘Yeah, his father. He was shot dead by his dog.’
‘He was indeed,’ said Ronald. ‘Fifteen years ago, if I remember correctly. It was bizarre. Everyone thought he had been murdered…’
‘Yeah, I remember the case now,’ said Blizzard. ‘But it was not one of ours, surely? I thought it happened over towards Burniston. You were there, weren’t you, Arthur?’
‘I was indeed. The case was handled by our CID. DI Wheatley, if I am not mistaken.’
‘It was,’ said Colley. ‘In fact, I have just come off the phone with him.’
‘How is Danny?’ asked Ronald. ‘He’s still in traffic, isn’t he?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Such a waste,’ said Blizzard, earning himself a disapproving look from the superintendent, who had at one point been in charge of the area’s traffic section.
‘You had better watch what you say about him,’ warned Ronald. ‘They reckon Danny Wheatley will be a chief superintendent within five years. He’s the Chief Constable’s blue-eyed boy, remember.’
‘And there was me thinking I was,’ said Blizzard innocently. ‘It would explain why I didn’t get a Christmas card from him last year. Mind, I’m not surprised Danny’s done well, he was always very good at shuffling paper clips as I recall.’
Ronald let the comment go.
‘Anyway,’ said Colley, ‘it was Danny who told me all about Willy Ramage and the link with Green Meadow Farm.’
It had been a sensational story at the time. Willy Ramage was a typical north country farmer. A man of few words and even fewer airs and graces, he had grown arable crops and kept a dairy herd at Green Meadow for nearly forty years, like his father and grandfather before him. Over time, Ramage had developed his business until he was able to purchase a second farm at Burniston, ten miles to the north of Green Meadow. He moved his family there because the farmhouse was much bigger; his son Henderson, daughter-in-law and their two children lived with the Ramages and the house had become too cramped. Willy Ramage left Green Meadow to be run by a tenant farmer.
One crisp winter morning, Willy went out on his customary early morning walk around his lands at Burniston, with his constant companion Ben, a black retriever, trotting by his side. They were after crows and Ramage had his shotgun with him as usual. By lunchtime, he still had not returned and Henderson and one of the farmhands went looking for him. They found Willy Ramage sprawled in a copse, trusty dog by his side, guarding the body. The police quickly confirmed that Ramage had sustained a massive shotgun injury to the leg and bled to death. There were signs that, although gravely injured, he had tried desperately to drag himself along the ground in the direction of the farmhouse a mile away. Initially, DI Danny Wheatley and his team treated it as a murder-style inquiry but forensic studies of the angle of the shotgun blast and markings on the ground led them to conclude that Willy had shot himself, the cartridge perhaps ricocheting off the hardened icy ground and tearing into his leg. Given that there was nothing in his life to suggest that he would want to kill himself, they came to the conclusion that he stumbled while walking through the copse and that the gun went off. Finding nothing else to explain such a stumble, they formulated the theory that in some way the dog impeded him, perhaps running across his path or jumping up. The story made headlines the world over.
‘And it all happened about the same time our Mr Knoefler was dumped in the grave on Ramage’s land,’ said Colley.
‘Like you say,’ said Blizzard, ‘it gets stranger and stranger. And you know, I am sure I recognise the name Henderson Ramage from somewhere else as well.’
‘Got form for handling stolen goods and a couple of nasty assaults. He glassed a bloke in one of them. Bloke ended up being given seven pints of blood.’
‘He’s a nasty bit of work is Henderson Ramage,’ said Ronald. ‘When I was at Burniston, Danny Wheatley had him in on several occasions.’
‘Yeah,’ said Colley. ‘Most of it happened in Burniston’s patch. Danny gave me the low-down. Besides, I’ve had dealings with Henderson Ramage myself over here.’
‘I’m sure one of our lot investigated Henderson Ramage when I was on the drugs squad as well,’ added Blizzard.
‘Probably did,’ said Colley. ‘He’s got form for a bit of heroin dealing. Nothing big-time though.�
��
‘Did any of the offences take place at Green Meadow Farm?’ asked Ronald.
‘No,’ said Colley. ‘But one happened at the Burniston farm eight years ago. CID found him storing stolen tractor parts and a couple of half-inched quad bikes in one of the sheds. Ramage claimed he did not know how they got there.’
‘It’s those blessed fairies again,’ murmured Blizzard.
‘Must have been. They’ve got a lot to answer for. Anyway, he coughed to it.’
‘And what did he get for that?’ asked the chief inspector.
‘Three months. Got out in five weeks apparently. Good behaviour.’
‘Marvellous,’ snorted Blizzard.
‘Actually, it was not that bad,’ said Colley. ‘One of the quad bikes was lifted from a neighbouring farm – the words “shit” and “nest” spring readily to mind. When he got out, the farm lads went round to hold a lively discussion on the rights and wrongs of property ownership with our Henderson. Gave him such a beating, his skull thought it was a bagatelle machine. ‘Ker-ching, ker-ching!’
‘I take it he means a criminal assault upon Mr Ramage’s person took place?’ asked Roland.
‘I believe so,’ said Blizzard. ‘Although Colley-speak can be a difficult language to translate into English. I’m thinking of running a course on it for beginners. You might want to enrol, Arthur.’
The sergeant grinned at Ronald’s perplexed expression; he loved winding the superintendent up and the senior officer, for his part, knew it was the price he paid for having a damned good detective on the team.
‘I take it Henderson still owns Green Meadow Farm?’ asked Blizzard.
‘Yeah, most of it,’ said Colley. ‘Apart, of course, from the bit he offered to the housebuilders. And that caused a bit of a fuss as well. I’ve sent Freddy Furnell to do some door-to-door in Hawkwith to see if he can turn anything juicy up from the locals.’
‘Good stuff,’ said Blizzard. ‘How are we doing with our Herr Knoefler?’
‘Not so well. I put a call into the German Embassy in London this morning but they have not been able to turn anything up yet. They seemed to think they would, given a little time. She was a very nice girl, I talked to, mind, guv. Sounded busty.’
