The Night Hawks

by Griffiths, Elly

  Nelson means well but he can’t resist playing a game where he is a hungry bear and George is his prey. Bruno encourages him with staccato barks. Michelle shouts up the stairs and Nelson reverts to the bedtime routine. But George is too excited to listen to a Thomas the Tank Engine story and Nelson’s eyes are crossing with boredom as he reads. It’s eight o’clock when George finally goes to sleep, then Bruno needs to be taken out for a walk, so it’s past nine by the time that Nelson sits down in front of the TV with his heated-up supper on a tray.

  ‘Good day?’ asks Michelle, looking away from a programme which, inexplicably, appears to be about people sewing.

  ‘OK,’ says Nelson, shovelling in cottage pie. ‘Some poor sod washed up on the beach. Probably an asylum seeker.’

  ‘We should have stricter controls,’ says Michelle, looking back at the television.

  Nelson wonders what Ruth would say to this, probably something about looking after people in need. ‘There’s plenty of money in the world,’ she told him once, ‘it’s just not shared out fairly.’ He doesn’t tell Michelle about the hoard or the skeleton. He never mentions Ruth at home if he can avoid it.

  Michelle goes to bed at ten and Nelson isn’t long after her. They make love in an abstracted, but not untender, fashion and Nelson falls asleep dreaming of buried treasure. He’s awoken by his work phone. It’s ten minutes past midnight.

  ‘Boss.’ It’s Judy. ‘I’m at Black Dog Farm near Sheringham. Gunshots and screams heard inside the house. I think you’d better come.’

  Nelson goes into the spare room and makes two more calls, one to Jo and one to the Authorised Firearms team, requesting their attendance at Black Dog Farm. It’s not unusual to hear gunshots in rural areas, even at night when poachers are around, but the presence of firearms inside a house is another matter. If an officer has reason to suppose that someone has access to a lethal weapon, then back up is needed. Nelson gets dressed, quickly and quietly.

  ‘Michelle? Love? I’ve been called out.’

  ‘OK,’ Michelle murmurs sleepily. He wonders if she’ll remember in the morning.

  As he descends the stairs, he can hear Bruno’s tail beating against the wooden floor. The dog accompanies him to the front door.

  ‘Sorry, mate,’ says Nelson. ‘This is work.’

  Bruno recognises the tone and lies down, whining gently, as if reminding Nelson that he is descended from a long line of police dogs and would be a great help with whatever lies ahead in the farmhouse with the odd name. Nelson doesn’t doubt it. He edges past Bruno and closes the door gently. It had been a mild day but the night is cold. Nelson can see his breath billowing as he unlocks his car. The cul-de-sac is dark and completely silent. But, as Nelson drives away, he thinks that he can still hear the soft whining of a dog.

  It’s about an hour’s drive from King’s Lynn to Sheringham but the roads are empty and Nelson drives fast. Super Jo once sent him on a speed awareness course but Nelson thinks that traffic rules are for other people. Judy has provided him with a postcode and his phone’s satnav takes him on a bewildering route through shuttered villages and narrow tree-lined lanes. Nelson’s headlights pick out abandoned petrol stations, pub signs creaking in the wind, the glassy eyes of a fox. God, how he loathes the countryside.

  ‘You have arrived at your destination,’ says his phone but, as far as Nelson can make out, he’s still in the middle of bloody nowhere. He gets out of the car. He’s in a lane with high hedges on either side. It’s still pitch black but, when he turns his torch to the right, he sees a rotting gate propped open by a stone and a sign that says, uncompromisingly, ‘To the farm’. He gets back in the car and proceeds along the long, pitted track, wincing at the thought of the damage to the suspension. Just when he’s thinking that this can’t possibly lead anywhere, a square house seems to appear out of the gloom. Several vehicles are parked nearby and he can see the bulky shapes of the Firearms team.

  ‘Boss?’ Judy appears at his window.

  ‘What’s going on?’ says Nelson, getting out of the car.

  ‘Shots reported at five past midnight. Since then, nothing. The AFOs are about to go in.’

  As Nelson approaches the house, a security light comes on. The crouching figures are suddenly in the spotlight. One of them makes a gesture for him to step back. Nelson recognises her as the Operational Firearms Commander, Sara Bright.

  Nelson goes to Sara’s side.

  ‘Take it gently,’ he says. ‘If someone inside the house is armed, we don’t want them to become alarmed and start shooting.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ says Sara. ‘I’m in touch with my TFC.’

  The TFC is the Tactical Firearms Commander, who will be directing operations remotely. This is one reason why Nelson hates calling for the armed response team. He can’t bear not being in control.

  The armed officers spread out around the house, leaving Nelson, Sara and another officer by the front door. Sara knocks loudly. No answer. She shouts, ‘Police! If you’re in there, come out now and no one will get hurt.’

  Her voice echoes against wood and stone. Nelson has a sense that, apart from the police, there’s not another living soul for miles around.

  ‘Armed police,’ yells Sara. ‘Come out of the address now or we’re coming in.’ Why the address and not the house? thinks Nelson inconsequentially. When did they all start speaking like this?

  Sara looks at Nelson. He nods. The other officer kicks at the door. It opens easily; the wood must be as rotten as the gate.

  ‘Let’s go in,’ says Nelson.

  Nelson follows the two armed officers into the hall. His torch illuminates banisters, a grandfather clock, old-fashioned wallpaper.

  ‘If there’s anyone here,’ he shouts, ‘come out with your hands up.’

  No answer except for the clock ticking. There are closed doors on the left and the right and one half-open straight ahead. The male officer kicks open the left-hand door. ‘Nothing here.’

  Nelson follows Sara through the open door. They’re in a kitchen: pine units, Aga, tiles, hanging herbs, a strong smell of hot iron.

  ‘On the floor,’ says Sara.

  Nelson lowers his torch and sees what’s left of a face.

  ‘Body here,’ he says. ‘Adult male. Deceased. Looks like he shot himself. Let’s go upstairs,’ he turns to Sara.

  Judy is in the hallway. ‘Wait outside,’ says Nelson. He couldn’t face Cathbad if anything happened to Judy. He’s not sure that he could face himself, come to think of it.

  At the top of the stairs they find a woman’s body, face down, bullet wounds in her back. She too is dead. The firearms officers check the other rooms but they are all empty.

  Back outside, Nelson calls the Forensics team and the coroner. The faintest tinge of daylight has started to silhouette the trees on the edge of the field. Nelson is dimly aware of birds singing.

  ‘Murder-suicide?’ says Judy.

  ‘Looks like it. Any idea who they are?’

  ‘Farm is owned by Dr Douglas Noakes and his wife Linda. That’s all I know.’

  ‘Who reported the shooting? It’s not as if they have any neighbours.’

  ‘A couple of men out walking in the fields.’

  ‘Out walking? At midnight?’

  ‘It’s something they often do,’ says Judy. ‘They’re metal detectorists.’

  ‘Black Dog Farm,’ says Tom Henty. ‘That must be the Black Shuck. Sheringham, did you say? That’s his patch, all right.’

  Tom, the desk sergeant, has been at King’s Lynn for as long as any of them can remember. He’s also a fount of knowledge on Norfolk lore and customs. It’s six a.m. and Judy and Nelson are drinking coffee in Tom’s cubbyhole behind the reception desk. The early shift is starting to arrive. Nelson has called a briefing at seven.

  ‘I think I’ve heard that name before,’ says Nels
on.

  ‘The Black Shuck is famous round here,’ says Judy, who is also Norfolk born. ‘It’s a gigantic black dog who appears to people just before they die.’

  ‘That’s right,’ says Tom cosily, offering a tin of biscuits. ‘His eyes are made of hellfire and, if you see him, you die within the year.’

  ‘Doesn’t he have just one eye, like Cyclops?’ says Judy.

  ‘Sometimes,’ says Tom. ‘He appears all over Norfolk – and Suffolk too. You can see his claw marks on the church door in Bungay.’

  ‘I heard that was the devil in dog form,’ says Judy, ‘not the Shuck at all.’

  ‘Jesus wept,’ says Nelson. ‘What a lunatic bloody place this is. Don’t tell me you believe in this Black Shack, do you?’

  ‘Black Shuck,’ says Judy. ‘On stormy nights, you can hear him howling. Or you can hear him following you in the dark, his chain rattling behind him.’

  ‘You’ve been living with Cathbad too long,’ says Nelson. But, despite himself, he remembers Bruno whining as he left the house in the early hours of the morning, and the way that the sound had seemed to follow him as he drove through the dark streets. This place is finally getting to him. Maybe they should move back to Blackpool after all.

  ‘Oh, Cathbad’s seen the Black Shuck,’ says Judy, ‘and he’s OK.’

  ‘He’s seen . . .’ Nelson is temporarily speechless.

  ‘Wonder if he’s meant to haunt your farm,’ says Tom. ‘It’s a funny name to give a place otherwise.’

  ‘Well, he didn’t bring the occupants much luck tonight,’ says Nelson, standing up. ‘Come on, Judy. Let’s get ready for this briefing.’

  The briefing room is full. Even Super Jo is there. The double deaths and the presence of the Authorised Firearms team make this case a priority for everyone. Tanya is seething because she wasn’t called out.

  ‘We don’t have a formal identification,’ says Nelson, ‘but we believe the deceased to be Dr Douglas Noakes, aged sixty, and his wife Linda, aged fifty-eight. Shots were heard coming from the farmhouse at approximately twelve midnight. Local police were called and they informed DI Johnson, who alerted me. I called the AFO who entered the house with me at 1.30 a.m. We found the body of a man in the kitchen who appeared to have been shot in the head. A handgun was beside him. A woman’s body was at the top of the stairs. She had been shot several times in the back. Both victims were dead at the scene.’

  Tanya’s hand is up. ‘Is it a murder-suicide?’

  ‘Looks very much like it,’ says Nelson, ‘but let’s not make assumptions until we have the coroner’s report.’ Once again, he misses Clough who would have classified this crime as DODI or ‘Dead One Did It’.

  He continues. ‘Dr Noakes was a research scientist who worked in Cambridge, his wife was a retired primary school teacher. They have two adult children, Chloe and Paul. We’re trying to trace them now.’

  ‘Who reported the shots?’ asks Tony Zhang.

  ‘This is where it gets interesting,’ says Nelson. ‘The shots were reported by two metal detectorists who happened to be in the area. Their names are Alan White and Neil Topham.’

  ‘Weren’t they two of the people who found the body yesterday?’ says Tony.

  ‘Yes,’ says Nelson, pleased that he has remembered. ‘And another of the detectorists, one of the so-called Night Hawks, is Paul Noakes, the son of Douglas and Linda.’

  There’s a murmur in the room. Nelson raises a hand. ‘It could be just a coincidence but three bodies in two days certainly bears investigation. We’ll be talking to all the Night Hawks today. Do you have anything to add, Superintendent Archer?’ He says this because Jo has stood up in a meaningful way.

  ‘We’re making a statement to the press at nine a.m.,’ says Jo. ‘I want you to be there, Nelson, as well as DI Johnson and DC Zhang. I’ll do the talking.’

  I bet you will, thinks Nelson. He knows why she wants Judy and Tony – to show that the force isn’t entirely male or of one ethnicity. Tanya will be furious.

  Chapter 6

  By early afternoon Judy finds herself sinking into a dream-like lethargy. She is meant to be putting together a dossier on Douglas and Linda Noakes but in reality she’s staring at the little letters as they rearrange themselves into different shapes and patterns. A line of Ns, slantwise on the screen, has her mesmerised for about ten minutes. She’s too old to miss a night’s sleep and still be able to function, she thinks. Although the boss, who is more than ten years older than her, seems unaffected. She can hear him barking orders in his office, which seems about a million miles away.

  ‘Judy!’

  Judy swims to the surface to find Leah, Nelson’s PA, speaking to her.

  ‘Your daughter’s in reception.’

  For a moment, Judy doesn’t take this in. Her daughter, Miranda, aged five, is actually in the reception class at school. Why is Leah telling her this? Leah, a perceptive soul, must have noticed her confusion because she says, ‘Your other daughter. The journalist.’

  Ah, she must mean Maddie who is, strictly speaking, ­Cathbad’s daughter and not hers. Judy isn’t even her stepmother because she and Cathbad aren’t married. Judy is fond of Maddie but she has no illusions about this visit. Maddie is after a story and she knows that saying she’s Judy’s daughter will get her an instant audience with the investigating team.

  ‘Can you ask her to come up?’ says Judy. ‘Thank you, Leah.’

  She must have got into another waking doze because, a few seconds later, Maddie materialises in front of her. Maddie is twenty-seven but looks a lot younger, small and slight with long blonde hair tied back in a ponytail. But Judy knows that Maddie’s look of frailty is deceptive or, at least, only part of the picture. Maddie can be vulnerable at times. She has never really got over losing her half-sister, Scarlet, when she was a teenager. Scarlet was murdered – it was Judy’s first case for the Serious Crimes Unit – and none of them have ever forgotten her. Ruth’s daughter, Kate, has the middle name Scarlet. Judy sometimes thinks that Maddie’s return to Norfolk, after university in Leeds, is part of her unrelenting search for her sister. But, despite all this, Maddie is also tough and determined, and an absolute terrier when on the trail of a story. She works for the local newspaper, the Chronicle.

  ‘Hi, Judy,’ says Maddie, taking the seat opposite her. ‘You look tired.’

  ‘Thanks. I was up all night.’

  ‘Was that the Black Dog Farm shooting?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Jo’s statement has been repeated on every news briefing since nine o’clock that morning. Judy is surprised it took Maddie so long to find her.

  ‘So,’ Maddie gets out her notebook, ‘is it a murder-suicide?’ She fixes Judy with her most compelling gaze. Maddie has remarkable eyes, green with flecks of gold. They must come from her mother, Delilah, because Cathbad’s eyes are blue. Even though she’s used to it, Judy blinks under the force of Maddie’s stare.

  ‘We can’t be sure yet,’ says Judy.

  ‘Superintendent Archer said that two people were found dead at the house. Is that Douglas and Linda Noakes?’

  Judy knows that Maddie has rather a crush on Super Jo. She, herself, had found the press conference a waste of time. What’s the point of making a statement to say that you’ve nothing to say?

  ‘Did Douglas kill Linda and then kill himself?’ asks Maddie, pen poised.

  ‘We don’t know yet,’ says Judy. ‘We’re still investigating. When we know something, I’ll tell you.’

  ‘Really? Can I have an exclusive?’

  ‘I’ll have to check it with the boss.’

  ‘With Nelson? He’ll say yes.’ She’s probably right. Maddie is friends with Nelson’s daughters and he frequently treats her with the indulgence that he displays towards his family, and no one else.

  ‘It’s a funny place, Black Dog Farm,’ says
Maddie, settling back in her chair as if preparing for a long chat. Judy is starting to see black specks in front of her eyes.

  ‘Do you know it, then?’ asks Judy.

  ‘I’ve heard stories about it,’ says Maddie.

  ‘The Black Shuck?’

  ‘No,’ says Maddie. ‘You don’t believe in that rubbish, do you? Is Cathbad getting to you at last?’ Maddie almost always calls Cathbad by his adopted name, ‘Dad’ is reserved for her stepfather.

  ‘I don’t believe in it,’ says Judy, slightly too sharply. ‘But lots of people do.’

  ‘People will believe anything,’ says Maddie. ‘It’s the first thing you learn in journalism. No, I was thinking of something else. I think there was another murder there.’

  Judy wakes up slightly. ‘Let me know if you find anything out.’

  ‘I will,’ says Maddie, closing her book. ‘And you let me know about the exclusive. Give my love to Cathbad and the kids.’

  ‘You must come for supper one day,’ says Judy. ‘We’d all love to see you.’

  When Nelson emerges from his office, he tells Judy to go home.

  ‘Go and get some sleep,’ he says. ‘We need you at full strength in the morning.’

  ‘Who’s going to interview Alan White?’ says Judy.

  ‘Tanya can do it. She’s well prepared.’

  Judy bets that she is. But she’s too tired to feel resentful. She gathers up her phone and car keys.

  ‘Maddie was here earlier,’ she says. ‘She wants an exclusive.’

  Nelson laughs, but quite benevolently. ‘I’m not saying another word to the press. Not even to Maddie.’

  Driving home, Judy thinks about her almost stepdaughter. Maddie lived with them for two years before moving out last year to share a flat in Lynn with two friends. At times Judy had been irritated by Maddie’s presence – her erratic routine, her midnight raids on the fridge, her bedroom curtains drawn until midday – but now she misses her. She and Maddie had watched hours of trashy TV together (Cathbad thinks that televisions emit harmful rays) and it was fun to have a young adult about the place, someone to translate the mysteries of social media and to identify the celebrities on Strictly Come Dancing. It had been useful to have a built-in babysitter too; Michael and Miranda adore their half-sister.