The Hanging Wood

by Martin Edwards

  He was half-English, and Mum remained a passionate Anglophile until the day she died. She’d deserved so much more than the hand-to-mouth existence she’d led. She kept in touch with news from Britain, and she knew all about Callum’s disappearance. It made the national newspapers, and she said she’d thought about contacting Mike Hinds, and letting him know that he still had one son, but she was afraid her child would be rejected, as she had been.

  He was intrigued by Callum’s disappearance and wondered if his half-sister knew more about it than had been made public, but he’d never returned to the land of his birth until this year. It wasn’t a conscious avoidance, it was just how it happened. You had to trust to fate. In the States, he almost came a cropper when he sold some drugs to a pretty customer who turned out to be a female cop. A quick getaway saved him, but he was ready for a change of scene. And, for a man who never did things by halves, why not a change of ID as well?

  So Aslan Sheikh was born.

  The small room was stuffy, even with the window thrown open. He kicked off his shoes and padded off to stand under a cold shower, relishing the jets of water as they smacked against his chest, buttocks and legs.

  It was almost a metaphor. Washing away the wrongs of the past. Shutting his eyes, he pictured his mother’s face, and saw a slow smile creep across it.

  ‘How are you spending the rest of today?’ Daniel asked, as they leafed through the pamphlets in the theatre shop.

  ‘Praying for an excuse to put off mowing the lawn,’ Hannah said. ‘Occasionally, I remember Marc did have his uses.’

  ‘Why don’t we take a walk around the lake? Not enough time for a full circuit, obviously, but we can catch the launch back from one of the jetties.’

  ‘Don’t you have a book to write?’

  ‘I’m in search of inspiration.’

  ‘You’re writing about the history of murder, aren’t you; De Quincey and all that? I’m not sure I’m flattered.’

  He laughed. ‘While I’m at it, why don’t we come back here for dinner this evening and then watch the play, if they have a couple of tickets left? What the Butler Saw, it’s my favourite by Orton. It’s the one where a character says, We must tell the truth! To which she is told that’s a thoroughly defeatist attitude.’

  ‘Sounds like a lot of defence lawyers I’ve met.’

  ‘Can I take that as a yes, then?’

  ‘So why did you want to meet here?’ Aslan asked. ‘A bit risky, I thought.’

  His companion’s eyes settled on the farm buildings. The day was over, and the roaring tractors had fallen silent. Aslan had arrived in good time before his appointment, and he’d caught sight of the farm labourers clambering into the van that would take them to their accommodation in the town. In the old farmhouse, a light shone behind a curtained window.

  ‘There’s a very good reason, believe me.’

  ‘Want to share it with me?’

  Aslan leant against the side of the slurry tank, as if he’d paused for a casual chat. Not for the first time in his life, he was finding it hard not to sound cocky. So far, so brilliant. The bag at his feet bulged with banknotes. This was a highly professional transaction. A pleasure to do business.

  ‘Don’t you want to count the money?’

  Aslan smiled. ‘Shouldn’t I trust you?’

  A shrug. ‘It’s up to you.’

  ‘Oh well, you’re right. It’s sensible to take precautions.’

  Aslan grinned. Crushed in his hand was his tiny mobile. Any messing, and he’d dial 999. And the butterfly knife was sticking out of his jeans pocket, backup if he needed it.

  As he bent down, he heard the knife fall to the ground and before he could pick it up, he felt a searing pain in the side of his head. He fumbled frantically with his phone, but the agony was unbearable, and he couldn’t think straight.

  His last conscious thought took him back all those years to when he used to watch the cruise ships sailing away from Warnemünde. Sailing beyond the lighthouse and into the unknown.

  ‘It’s years since I’ve seen an Orton play,’ Hannah said, as they joined the crowd streaming out of the theatre. ‘The last one was Loot. I seem to remember it features a bungling police inspector.’

  Daniel cleared his throat. ‘I’m innocent till I’m proved guilty. This is a free country. The law is impartial. To which Inspector Truscott replies, Who’s been filling your head with that rubbish?’

  She laughed and mimed applause. ‘Do you have an encyclopaedic recall of loads of British literature?’

  ‘Only enough to get me through the pub quiz at the Brack Arms.’ They stopped outside the front entrance, letting people bustle past on their way to the car park. Darkness had fallen, but the night was still warm. ‘Speaking of pubs, how about a drink before we head back?’

  ‘Thanks, but I’ll say no.’ She smiled. ‘It’s been a lovely day, Daniel. I’ve enjoyed seeing you again, and thanks for filling me in on your conversations with poor Orla Payne.’

  ‘Any time.’

  As he bent forward to kiss her cheek, a ringtone pierced the chatter of the passing theatregoers. Hill Street Blues.

  ‘Shit, that’s me,’ Hannah murmured. ‘Lousy timing, as ever.’

  She plucked a phone out of her bag and took a few paces to one side as she listened. He watched as her expression changed from annoyance to alarm.

  ‘What is it?’ he asked as she finished the call.

  ‘That was Mario Pinardi,’ she said hoarsely. ‘He’s investigating Orla’s death. And now he has another corpse on his hands.’

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  ‘Unbelievable.’ Mario Pinardi yawned as he took a weary swig from the polystyrene coffee cup, and spilt as much as he drank. Lucky the carpet tiles were the colour of mud. ‘Two bodies found on the same farm inside a week. I mean, what are the odds on that being a coincidence?’

  ‘When the deceased are a woman and her long-lost half-brother? When they both worked together? When the farm belongs to their father?’ Hannah bit into the Cox’s Orange Pippin she’d stuffed into her bag before driving out to Keswick. ‘A zillion to one, I’d say.’

  After a night without sleep, Mario’s face was as grey as the fells in winter. His eyes had a haunted look, as if he kept replaying in his mind the vision of the crime scene at Lane End. Big mistake. The first time Hannah ever saw a butchered body, Ben Kind advised her that some sights are best forgotten, if you want to stay sane. One horror was all it took to send some people into a tailspin. And it didn’t get any worse than watching as a corpse with a crushed skull was dredged out of a slurry tank.

  Mario tossed his cup towards the waste-paper basket. Short by a clear six inches. ‘The stench soaked into my sinuses; it feels like I’ll never breathe fresh air again,’ he muttered. ‘Christ, what a way to go.’

  ‘You could do with a couple of hours’ kip,’ she said. ‘Must be twenty-four hours since you last saw Alessandra.’

  ‘No time.’ Mario gritted his teeth. ‘Got to keep going.’

  She didn’t try to talk him round; he had to show a lead. Keswick’s incident room scarcely ever buzzed like this, let alone at one o’clock on a summer Sunday, but all available staff had been hauled in at short notice to help out. An admin assistant chewed her biro as she listened to a voicemail message from the coroner’s officer; the fingers of her colleagues raced across keyboards, inputting data from the crime scene. A printer spewed out pages of typescript; in the corner, a scanner whirred. They were already more than halfway through the crucial first twenty-four hours of the murder enquiry, and nobody was agonising about the overtime bill. Yet.

  Hannah and Mario perched on plastic chairs either side of a whiteboard on which he’d scrawled a crude map of the farm with a red marker pen. This morning the brass had confirmed Mario as SIO in the Lane End murder enquiry. A no-brainer, given his involvement in the Orla Payne case, and the absence through holidays and sickness of more senior officers, even though he was only a DI. He’d feel the
pressure of overpromotion, nagged by the knowledge that if he didn’t achieve a quick result someone was bound to be brought in over his head. When she’d called to suggest they share intelligence, Mario didn’t think twice before saying yes.

  ‘Sheikh had a bedsit in Crosthwaite. So far, we’ve found two separate sets of ID. Fake papers in the name of Aslan Sheikh, which he used to get into this country. Another has his first name as Nuri Michael Iskirlak.’

  ‘Michael?’

  ‘Yeah, seems like his mum named him after Hinds, even though the feller dumped her.’ Mario sighed and said again, ‘Unbelievable.’

  Why is life so often one unbelievable thing after another? Hannah wondered. Aloud, she said, ‘Any leads from Crosthwaite?’

  ‘Not a lot. Plenty of stamps in both his passports, real and false. We’ve established that he grew up first in Turkey and then in Germany. He travelled light, and he didn’t give much away about himself to anyone. His landlady lives on the ground floor, but she’s a turn-a-blind-eye sort who thinks he’s brought one or two women back since he moved in, but doesn’t know if any of them stayed overnight. She can’t help us with his movements yesterday, and her other tenant is off trekking across Europe. Thanks for nothing, eh?’

  ‘Anyone talking to the people he worked with at St Herbert’s?’

  ‘My DS is there now – apparently the library is open seven days a week. I’d no idea people still read so much. What we’ll learn, God knows. Sheikh doesn’t sound the bookish type to me. There are no books at Crosthwaite except a battered copy of one of the Narnia books and a paperback of On the Road. His iPod holds some crap music and no photographs. Thirty years old, but never settled down. Bit of a chancer, if you ask me.’

  ‘Last night he took one chance too many.’

  Aslan had made two 999 calls. The first cut off after three seconds, with nothing said. In the second, moments later, a man had shouted something. It was wild and unintelligible and on the recording it sounded to Hannah like a bitten-off yelp. A crashing noise was followed by a low groan that reminded her of the air hissing out of a punctured tyre. Another crash, then the line went dead. By identifying the mobile phone mast which picked up the strongest signal from the phone, the call had soon been tracked to the vicinity of Lane End Farm. The same area from which Michael Hinds had called earlier in the week to summon the emergency services after he discovered his daughter’s corpse in a tower of grain. But the call had not come from the same phone.

  Mario was finishing his shift when he was alerted, due to his familiarity with Lane End Farm. He’d decided to call there himself, along with a young DC. The lights were on behind curtained windows, but Hinds and his wife took an age to answer the door. When they did, it was clear they’d been interrupted in the middle of a drunken sex session. They denied any knowledge of a 999 call, and insisted they’d heard nothing. The Polish workers had long since finished for the day and headed back to their rooms in Keswick in Hinds’ van. Leaving Lane End to just the farmer, his wife and their animals.

  Hinds wasn’t happy about being disturbed, but he didn’t have his scythe to hand, and it’s difficult to get too stroppy when you’re naked under a grubby old dressing gown. Mario insisted on taking a look around outside, and after a short argument, Hinds bowed to the inevitable. When Mario climbed a ladder to shine a flashlight into the slurry tank, he saw that the crust on top of the slurry had been smashed through.

  ‘When I realised there must be a body in the tank,’ Mario had said, ‘I watched Hinds, to study his reaction. Fear, horror, shock, guilt? Not a muscle in his face moved, I swear. Not so much as a twitch. He might have been the Man in the Iron Mask, for all the emotion I saw.’

  They’d needed to summon support and special equipment to fish the body out of the tank, and it wasn’t recovered until the early hours. By then, Mario had obtained a provisional ID. There had been some sort of struggle on the cobbles close to the slurry tank, and a bank debit card had slipped out of the dead man’s pocket. It bore the name of Aslan Sheikh.

  ‘Would have been nice if the killer had dropped a credit card instead, but life’s never that simple, is it? We also found a butterfly knife nearby.’

  ‘You think the victim took it with him for protection?’

  ‘I guess so, given that it’s not the murder weapon. Sheikh must have dropped it when he was attacked, and either the killer didn’t see it in the dark, or wasn’t bothered about it.’

  ‘Any sign of Sheikh’s mobile?’

  ‘In the slurry tank, along with its owner.’

  Hinds had insisted on taking a look at the body once it had undergone some rudimentary cleaning up, so that the bloodied features were discernible. He claimed he’d never seen the dead man before in his life. Nor did he have the faintest idea why an unknown corpse should have turned up at Lane End, days after his daughter had chosen the farm as the place to end her life.

  Either he was guilty, or very, very unlucky.

  Events moved fast following the discovery of the corpse. Hinds called Gareth Madsen for a recommendation to a shit-hot lawyer, and when his old friend heard that the body probably belonged to Aslan Sheikh, he dropped the bombshell that Aslan had told Purdey of his true identity. At that point, even the iron mask crumpled with shock. But Hinds refused to say anything more until the legal eagle showed up.

  Mario had interviewed Hinds for a second time that morning, this time in the presence of a sharp-suited criminal solicitor from Carlisle, to be met with flat denials that Hinds knew his son was in the country, far less that he called himself Aslan Sheikh and that for the past few weeks he’d been working at the library across the fields from Lane End. Despite tough questioning, Hinds gave nothing away. He’d never had any further contact with the boy’s mother after he’d paid her to have an abortion and leave the country. He said she and her pregnancy were a nuisance that had cost him an arm and a leg to dispose of, and that he’d not given her any further thought from that day to this. Let alone imagined that his son was back in the Lakes.

  ‘Hinds is a hard man,’ Mario said. ‘No doubt who is the real bastard in that family, for sure, but is he hard enough to have murdered his own flesh and blood?’

  ‘Forensics reckon Sheikh was killed at the farm?’

  ‘Looks that way. There are bloodstains and clothing fibres close by the slurry tank, plenty for us to work on. This looks like a crime of desperation. The head wounds were severe, and it seems unlikely he was transported from somewhere else.’

  ‘Was he dead when he went into the tank?’

  ‘Not sure yet. He was hit on the head several times, hence the blood splatter – a single blow wouldn’t have done it.’

  Sunday, very bloody Sunday. ‘So the culprit and the victim arranged a rendezvous at or close to the farm?’

  ‘Apparently. Assuming a prearranged meet, it looks like we’re not talking about a crime carefully planned out to the last detail.’

  ‘Cause of death?’

  ‘We’re spoilt for choice at present. Whether the blows to the head killed him straight off, or he died after he was inside the tank, we won’t know until the PM results are available. Just our luck it’s Sunday. Seems he had a thin skull, but if by any chance he wasn’t dead when he was bundled into the slurry, he’ll have inhaled the slurry into his lungs and drowned, or found it impossible to breathe under the weight of the stuff and suffocated.’ Mario grimaced. ‘I thought dying in a mountain of grain was bad enough, but …’

  ‘No sign of the murder weapon, you said?’

  ‘No, our culprit may have missed the things that the victim dropped, but he wasn’t considerate enough to leave his weapon lying around for us to fall over. The preliminary view is, it was a dumb-bell or something similar. Maybe from a gym.’

  ‘Plenty of people exercise with them at home. I do myself, though much less often than I ought to. Do Hinds and his wife have a set of dumb-bells?’

  ‘That isn’t how they get their exercise, apparently. The living
room stank of booze and sex when we arrived. We found pornographic DVDs, and Deirdre was wearing a basque. She had a yellowing bruise around her left eye. When I asked about it, she said she’d walked into a door on Friday night. She’d shoved a mask and a couple of nipple clamps under the cushions on the sofa and I found them as soon as she asked me to sit down. I’m still trying to figure out whether she meant me to see them or not.’

  ‘So they were too busy to realise what was happening – literally in their own backyard?’

  ‘That’s their story, and if the legal eagle has anything to do with it, they will stick to it like limpets. A middle-aged married couple enjoying themselves on a Saturday evening in the privacy of their own home, too preoccupied with connubial bliss and a Swedish movie about orgies in a convent to hear someone being battered to death in the dark outside.’ Mario gritted his teeth. ‘Somehow the nipple clamps seem like a detail which make it just about credible.’

  ‘Or is that what we are supposed to believe?’

  ‘Yeah, for all I know, the sexy set-up was concocted in the space of five minutes to give Hinds an alibi.’

  Hannah lobbed her apple core straight into the bin. Greg Wharf would have had a lot of fun with the vision of Deirdre wearing nipple clamps. Just as well he wasn’t here. Time to push him out of her mind.

  ‘And what do you believe, Mario?’

  ‘Wish I knew.’

  ‘Would Deirdre protect him if she thought he’d killed a man?’

  ‘He’s her husband.’

  Hannah made a face. She wouldn’t lie to save Marc in similar circumstances. But what if their relationship hadn’t hit the buffers, what if she had nothing else in her life but him?’

  ‘She’s frightened of Hinds, but I’d say there’s still a spark between them too. God knows what she sees in him.’ Mario winced. ‘Terrible what some men do to women. Would she perjure herself on his behalf? You bet. All the same, the thought of a man killing his own son …’