‘So did you resolve anything?’ I asked.
‘No, we were interrupted. Lynn called him out and they shot off all bells and whistles. I went back to doing a Health and Safety risk-assessment of the nick.’
We discovered the reason for Carrick’s hasty departure later that evening from the local TV news. Three bodies had been discovered by walkers in a disused farm building about two miles from Hinton Littlemoor. Such were the circumstances of the find that two elderly women had been taken to hospital suffering from shock. It would appear, yelled the over-excited young reporter, that the murder victims had been strung up by their feet and their throats had then been cut. The crime was already being dubbed the Ritual Killings.
James Carrick appeared on camera, with Lynn Outhwaite, mobbed by the media and looking a little driven. Questioned, he said merely that the murder victims had not yet been identified and that scene-of-crime officers would be working at the barn throughout the night.
‘No one’s said so but it’s Hagtop Farm,’ Elspeth said when the TV had been turned off. ‘I’d recognize that building anywhere. There was such a fuss when it was erected. The farm’s been an unhappy place for as long as anyone in the village can remember. And when foot and mouth struck a few years ago and all the cattle and sheep had to be destroyed it finished off poor old Barney Stonelake, the farmer, as well. They said he died of a broken heart. His son restocked and carried on for a while but when his mother had a stroke and had to go into a nursing home recently he had everything auctioned off and put the place on the market.’
I glanced at Patrick, the acute misery at his rejection tangible. Our eyes met and he put it into words.
‘I should be there,’ he said.
‘Then go,’ I said.
‘James made his feelings perfectly plain this morning. I’d be accused of making trouble.’
Up until now I had vowed that I would not interfere. For, after all, everything was now different and there was no need for me to become involved in Patrick’s new venture. I was discounting the words of a particularly poisonous civil servant, Nicholas Haldane, now in prison, who had once told me that without me Patrick would be nothing. It was untrue. But the female mindset does have its uses.
‘Where are you going?’ Patrick enquired as I headed for the door. He sounded a trifle alarmed, as if thinking that I was furious with him and raging off.
I blew him a kiss.
Two police vehicles were parked among others that possibly contained hopeful newshounds at the end of the lane that led to the crime scene, blue-and-white incident tape fluttering everywhere. I spoke to the constable who had flagged me down.
‘Is Detective Chief Inspector Carrick still here?’ I asked.
‘Are you from the press?’ he wanted to know.
‘No. Would you please ask him if I may approach? My name’s Ingrid Langley.’
‘I’m afraid that no one’s permitted to—’
‘Please ask him,’ I interrupted. ‘It’s very important.’
‘To the case?’
‘Yes.’
Of course it was, silly.
I sat, for some reason with heart hammering, while he got on his radio. The answer came quickly and one of the vehicles was moved so I could manoeuvre past it. The lane was very rutted and longer than I had imagined, the brightly lit scene ahead of me looking at first glance grotesquely like the venue for a rave.
The open area around the barn, which was of brutal, modern construction, covered what must have been at least six acres and consisted of sections of concrete with coarse tufts of grass and weeds growing in the cracks between them. There were various police vehicles parked there and other, unmarked, cars but they were reduced almost to toys by the size of the building itself. I could discern no trees or anything that might give a clue that here we were in deepest Somerset: this had been agribusiness, pure and simple.
Carrick and a young woman who must be Lynn Outhwaite – I had not met her before – left the building and came across as I got out of the car. By the illumination of the rigged-up lights I could see that Carrick’s sergeant was dark-haired and petite. She was dressed in a very well-cut trouser suit and sensible flat shoes.
‘What can I do for you, Ingrid?’ Carrick said.
‘May I speak with you in private?’ I requested.
‘This isn’t a good time,’ he replied.
‘Two minutes,’ I promised.
Carrick turned to Lynn. ‘Please excuse me for a moment.’
He and I walked away for a short distance.
‘I’m only here because you rang me,’ I began. ‘If you hadn’t I would have minded my own business. But I can’t, not now. Patrick is at the rectory when he should be here. And frankly, James, I didn’t think you’d allow this to go as far as it has. You’ve never seemed to me to be the sort of person to kick a man when he’s down.’
‘I’m not,’ said Carrick tautly.
‘Well, that’s where Patrick is. Down. Bet you never thought you’d see tears in his eyes, eh? You’re so in awe of the very rare occasions when he goes over the top, usually when in imminent danger of losing his life, you seem to have completely forgotten that he’s also hardworking, loyal, brave, sensitive to the feelings of others, unselfish and an extremely useful sort of bloke to have around.’
‘Ingrid—’
I carved him up. ‘To hell with your stubborn pride. I’ll do you a deal. I’ll act as go between. That’ll free Sergeant Outhwaite to get on with her job.’
He just stared at me.
‘Two for the price of one,’ I went on. ‘It’s hardly such a drastic step. I’ve worked with you both before.’
‘But I usually ended up by reading the riot act.’
‘So everyone will have to grow up, won’t they?’
Carrick is not stupid. He knew as well as I that I would not be spending my time relaying messages or little notes from one to the other. What I would actually be doing was acting as a fender.
‘This isn’t the first time I’ve done something like this,’ I told him. ‘When someone called Steve joined D12 and he and Patrick got off on the wrong foot. My presence helps – and then the problem goes away and people get on famously.’
It had worked for most of the time. I had no intention of mentioning the occasion I had been operating undercover with the pair of them and had not been able to prevent them fighting like Kilkenny tomcats outside a pub near Petworth.
There was a short, tense silence and then Carrick said, ‘I’ll think about it.’
‘No,’ I said. ‘I want to know now.’
He turned on his heel. ‘There’s work to do.’
I tagged along – he had not actually told me to go away – and the three of us went through the wide entrance into the barn. Wisely perhaps, Lynn was keeping any opinions she had to herself.
More lights had been rigged inside, like the others connected to a portable generator. In the harsh glare a dozen or more people, most wearing protective clothing, went to and fro and there were flashes as photographs were taken. This was taking place on the left-hand side of the interior, all of which was empty but for rubbish, a couple of stacks of old pallets and what appeared to be an overhead gantry of some kind. I discovered later that it had originally been used with a hoist to lift and move heavy round bales of hay, straw and silage, a dusty layer of which, mixed with manure, covered most of the floor. From this gantry three still figures were hanging and even from where I was standing I could see that the ground beneath them was a lake of blood.
As we approached, one of those who were white-suited detached from the tableau and ducked under another cordon of tape to speak to Carrick. I recognized the pathologist, a professor of forensic science at Bristol University, Sir Hugh Rapton, from a book of his I had read. This was interesting: I thought he had retired from active service, as it were.
‘Can you tell us anything yet, Sir Hugh?’ Carrick said quietly.
‘I can tell you more once they’ve b
een cut down.’
Carrick consulted the scene-of-crime officer, who confirmed that the preliminary stages had been completed, and preparations were made to lower the murder victims. Deliberately, I had not looked too closely up until now but saw with horror that one of the bodies was that of a woman. Illogical of me, I suppose, to assume that women are not disposed of in such ghastly fashion. The throats had been severed with such force that two of the heads were only attached by the spine and surrounding tissues. Blood still sluggishly dripped.
‘Well?’ said Carrick to me all at once, perhaps wondering if I had now changed my mind. It was as if we were strangers, his manner glacier-bleak.
I held the look, taking my mobile phone from my pocket. Several seconds ticked by and then I said, ‘It was you who had to make up your mind.’
‘He’s not a man to come running,’ Carrick said roughly.
‘If I ask him to come on your behalf he’ll come. James, Patrick is trying to make a new career for himself. But it won’t be furthered on your patch. Can’t you look at it from the point of view of helping him?’
Whether the DCI suddenly realized that he had been guilty of selfishness I do not know – I was making every excuse for him, bless his gorgeous blond hair and blue eyes, not least that when you have recently been at death’s door it can affect all judgement for a while – but after a few moments of agonizing hesitation he made a gesture of defeat and walked away. I found myself looking into Lynn’s bright, discerning gaze. ‘Good,’ she said quietly. I rang Patrick’s number.
‘According to Elspeth, Hagtop Farm was mentioned in the Domesday Book,’ Patrick said. He had borrowed his father’s car for the short journey. ‘And before that it appears there might have been Viking connections. Vera Stonelake, who’s now in a nursing home in this area, did quite a lot of research into the place some years ago and her findings were published in the parish magazine. The farm has a colourful history, not that it prevented her husband from demolishing some of it in the name of progress.’
James Carrick, who also has Viking connections as his mother came from Orkney, glanced up at the speaker from the notes he was making on the preliminary observations Rapton had made before he left. ‘Can you get hold of the article?’
‘No problem. My father always keeps the back numbers as a record. It isn’t the first time bodies have been found here either – only that was in the original stone barn that was on the site. Do we yet know who these people were?’
‘No, not yet. There was no identification on them at all.’
‘I didn’t think you could just demolish rural buildings like that,’ I said. ‘They’re usually protected in some way.’
‘You can’t,’ Carrick said. ‘He probably just went ahead and hoped no one would notice.’
‘Neither father nor son are pleasant characters, according to local opinion and my own personal knowledge,’ Patrick went on. ‘It might pay you to speak to Elspeth. Parsons’ wives tend to have all the dark deeds kind of local info.’
‘I’ll do that,’ the DCI promised.
‘She asked me to tell you there’ll be coffee brewing tomorrow morning at ten thirty should you be passing.’
Carrick looked at his watch. ‘This morning as it happens, it’s a quarter past midnight. I’ll do my best to get there.’ He reflected for a moment. ‘This dreadful incident has to be bigtime crime. But nothing much more can be achieved tonight. I suggest you both get some rest.’
I took a deep breath. So far everything had gone pretty well.
‘Anything you particularly want me to do first thing tomorrow?’ Patrick asked.
‘How are you with post-mortems?’
‘That wasn’t something I ever got involved with in the army.’
‘Now’s the time to start, then. Rapton’s kicking off at eight thirty if you’d care to attend.’
‘At the Royal United?’
‘That’s right.’
‘You’re an old hand at PMs,’ Patrick said to me encouragingly when we were outside. ‘You attended one not so long ago when you were researching your last novel.’
‘Do you really want me to come along?’
For an answer he gave me a big, brave, hopeful smile.
‘But you’re not remotely squeamish,’ I protested. ‘You’ve seen all kinds of ghastly sights, people blown up with their innards all over the place and things like that.’
‘It’s not quite the same as watching someone slice the top off a corpse’s head with a bandsaw.’
I was not feeling particularly cheerful at the prospect either but gave him a big smile back and said, ‘At least these’ll be fresh. The last one had been dead for the best part of two years.’
They were fresh and bloodless, of course. This, together with the starkly lit and antiseptic environment of the mortuary and Sir Hugh Rapton’s deft efficiency, helped to alleviate the grisliness of what was taking place. It was possible to become quite interested in a diseased liver, a heart showing signs of enlargement, the missing gall bladder and appendix.
‘I would say this man had quite a few sessions in hospital,’ Rapton commented as he completed the work of removing internal organs for analysis, on this, his first post-mortem on the list. ‘Do we know their identities?’
‘No,’ Patrick replied. ‘And I’ve never seen them before – my parents live in Hinton Littlemoor so I’m around the village quite a bit. For obvious reasons my father mostly knows the people who set foot in church.’
‘In a nutshell then we have two white males and one white woman. They had been dead for less than twenty-four hours. One would assume that they’d been killed some time the previous night.’
I was making notes.
‘The first,’ Rapton resumed, ‘this man here, as you can see, was around fifty-five years of age, and slightly overweight, flabby really, five feet eight inches tall, weighing thirteen stone eleven pounds. And, as we’ve just observed, he wasn’t very healthy. Also, there are streaks of what looks like white emulsion paint in his hair and under his fingernails but obviously it’ll be sent for testing. I’d say from his physique he was normally a couch potato so perhaps he’d just moved to the area and forced to do some decorating. That’s just a guess, of course. I like to try to see beyond the obvious.
‘The second male, whom we’ll take a look at in a minute, was younger. He’s twenty-five to thirty, six feet one inch tall and weighs twelve stone three. Fit-looking. There’s a scar on his chin and his top front teeth have been crowned so he might have been a bad boy and got into fights.’
‘Any private thoughts about that one?’ Patrick prompted when the pathologist paused.
‘He died with the kind of scowl on his face that suggested it was there for most of the time when he was alive.’
‘He might have had a criminal record, then?’
‘Just gut feelings,’ was all Rapton said. ‘If you’ll excuse the pun.’
‘And the woman?’
‘Well, she’s wearing a wedding ring but whether she’s the wife of this man here …’ He shrugged. ‘We’ll have to wait for the identification. Otherwise she’s about the same age, around fifty, thin, malnourished-looking. Five foot six, eight stone dead. Sorry about another pun. She was wearing quite a bit of jewellery – good stuff – some quite a lot older than the rest so that might have been her mother’s. Robbery can’t have been the name of the game, then. Nor had she been sexually interfered with. All these people were killed with what appears to be one slash of a very sharp knife. I would guess the blade would need to be at least ten inches long.’
‘A machete?’ Patrick asked.
‘Could be.’
Almost two hours later, the PMs completed, Rapton said, ‘Well, they were all finished off in the way I mentioned. There’s no sign of other injury prior to the one that killed them; attempted strangulation or anything like that. But whether they were doped or poisoned first will emerge after tests. Somehow, I think not but don’t quote me on that. Perhaps you
’d be so good as to tell Carrick I’ll try to get the results to him tomorrow. But I can’t promise anything. Toxology tests are complicated and time-consuming – as he well knows.’
A few minutes later we were outside in the fresh air and gratefully took deep breaths. Even newly dead bodies smell dreadful when they are cut open.
‘I honestly don’t know whether I need a cup of strong black coffee right now or to throw up,’ Patrick muttered.
‘Perhaps you’ll give me fair warning if it’s the latter,’ I requested.
We returned to the rectory, hoping to find Carrick there. He was not but arrived, on his own, a few minutes later.
‘Learn anything?’ he said to Patrick.
‘Yes, human beings have much longer guts than one would have ever thought possible.’
‘Useful, I meant,’ Carrick responded heavily.
Patrick turned on him a wide innocent gaze. ‘That’s a hellishly useful thing to know, cheering too if you happen to lose a couple of yards somehow.’ After I’d given him a look he continued, ‘The younger of the two men might have had form.’
‘He had,’ the DCI acknowledged briskly. ‘He did time for GBH and firearms offences. Plus attempted murder, which they couldn’t make stick.’ He took the tray of crockery from Elspeth as she entered the room, set it down on a small table and went on, ‘Name of Keith Davies. He had a flat in a mill conversion in the village here. As did the other two, Christopher and Janet Manley.’
‘Really?’ Elspeth exclaimed. ‘The three people who were murdered? How extraordinary!’
‘Did you know them?’ Carrick asked her.
‘No, I didn’t even know their names. I don’t think they were particularly friendly with anyone locally. Frankly, though, they were the sort of people whom you thought might come to a sticky end.’ She went away to get the coffee pot, leaving the DCI to marshal his thoughts and Patrick to hide a smile behind his hand.
‘So, if you don’t mind my asking,’ Carrick said carefully on her return, ‘what constitutes a person who might come to a sticky end?’
Tainted Ground Page 3
